


For You Are With Me

by goatman_entrapment



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demonic Possession, F/M, M/M, Multi, Possession, bewarb for some gross possession style body horror, but i tried to keep it mild, so this is very late no longer relevant and took me ass long to write, this is based off of that bit after the solano mission episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-09-25 15:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17123966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatman_entrapment/pseuds/goatman_entrapment
Summary: “I’m telling you right now if my eyes turn black, murder me.”“And I’m telling you right now, I will not kill you.”“Why?!”“Because I need to save you!”Or: Shane finally gets possessed by a demon and it's not as fun as anyone wants it to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What up party people. There's 9 chapters planned for this guy (rather, 8 chapters and an epilogue), and I hope to update about once a week, real life and mental health allowing. This is a very...not fun possession fic in that it's a little more William Peter Blatty (without the weird kid stuff) than Sexy Demon Stuff because I hate fun, I guess. Therefore, mind the tags, and check in with the notes in the chapters that get particularly tough. Anyways, I literally cannot believe I am doing this. Let's go to work.

It’s 3:00 a.m. and Shane wakes up for no reason. For once, it’s not Ryan frantically smacking him to consciousness because of some half-imagined sound--a creak of the house twisting into something strange and monstrous through the filter of no sleep and superstition. Ryan is, in fact, fast asleep and looking back, that should have been enough for Shane to realize that something is wrong. Ryan doesn’t _sleep_ on these trips. Ryan huddles in his sleeping bag, a warm and hysterical pressure point against Shane’s back and twitches his way til morning.

The silence is unnerving. Ryan isn’t even snoring, or moving in his sleeping bag. Shane sits up, and peers over at his companion, because it would be _so_ like Ryan to just die during a haunted house trip. It is possible to scare yourself to death, and if anyone can manage that in this day and age, it would be Ryan Bergara: ghost adventurer. 

But Ryan’s shoulders move up and down with steady, deep breaths, so definitely not dead. Shane spends an inexplicable moment watching his friend, face slack and peaceful with sleep, and spares a quick, fond smile. 

The moment, whatever it was, ends fast as Shane’s gaze is drawn to the corner of the room almost by instinct, some back-of-the-mind lizard brain survival impulse, still hanging on from when humanity huddled together in trees. Danger, danger, something screams at him as the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rises. He huffs out a breath and tries to grapple with this onset of fear as he always does. This place--St. Ann’s Retreat in Pine Glenn Cove--is an old camp resort in the woods of Utah. He’s been living in Los Angeles for too long. The lack of light pollution and the silence of the rural environment is making his brain nervous. He and Ryan spent hours roaming the halls while Ryan whispered details of the fucked up history of the place--

(“This is where a bunch of teenagers were held hostage on Halloween,” Ryan whispers at one point, as if he hadn’t already told Shane that in the history monologue he always does. Shane’s gaze follows Ryan’s shaking finger as he points to the cavernous empty swimming pool. “The watchmen tied them up with ropes and zip ties and told them that they were also tied to explosives. If they moved their ropes, a bomb would go off.”

Shane takes a moment to digest this and then says, “like a...Bond movie?”

Ryan snorts. “More like that guy,” he says, relaxing minutely as he gestures. “Uhh, the bomb collar guy.”

“Oh god,” Shane laughs. “Yeah, him. Except instead of a bomb there’s…? Nothing? Did they not notice there was no bomb?”

Ryan laughs again, louder this time, but still breathless and nervous. “I dunno, man,” he says. “If you’re a teenager just wanting to, I dunno, fuck around in a haunted house and some fuckin’ wannabe cops tie you up and tell you they’re gonna blow you the fuck up, you’re not gonna be thinking clearly!”

“I would!” Shane protests, still grinning. “Like, ‘sorry sir, you have a bomb? Where?’ I would clearly survive the night.”

Ryan coughs out another laugh, the cold air turning his breath to vapor. “They’d run out of rope trying to tie you up. There’s--there’s too much leg. We weren’t expecting a son of Bigfoot.”

“All right,” Shane waves Ryan’s obligatory tall joke off and stares at the shifting shadows and the graffiti spread out around the pool. It’s the standard issue bullshit. 

After a moment, Ryan says, “one of the witnesses says...that when he looked at the watchman’s eyes--the main guy in charge of holding them hostage--he said that his eyes were...demonic.”

Shane snorts. “Are we talking pitch black or, like, goat’s eyes?” he asks idly, giving Ryan a sarcastic glance. “Blood red? Glowing? Do you think demons have that thing...uh, where eyes glow in the dark when the light hits them? Eyeshine, or something like that?”

“God, you’re the worst,” Ryan laughs. “That doesn’t scare you, even a little bit?”

“Hogtying teenagers isn’t exactly the stuff of legends, Ryan,” Shane shoots back, rolling his eyes. “You’re really aiming high, demons!” He yells this into the woods, his voice echoes slightly in the night. Nothing else happens.

“Shut up!”)

Shane takes a breath, anchored by the memory of their banter. Ryan mentioned in the postmortem that Shane and their back-and-forth is something of a comfort to him, and at the time, Shane was touched but had discarded it as Ryan being sentimental. But here, at 3 a.m., when his mind is playing tricks on him in the dark, Shane thinks he understands. Humor defangs any beast, Shane thinks idly. Unless it’s a real beast. Like a bear, or a hippo, or something.

But there is something in the corner of their room.

They had opted to sleep in the common room of the main lodge, because Shane had liked the high ceilings and the impressive fireplace. There is a second floor, and the shadows past the banisters are deepening as though he is a patient in a surgeon’s theater. He feels a thousand eyes on him, and there is something in the corner of the room. Is it in the shadows, or _is_ it the shadows, he’s not sure, he’s not sure.

...This is stupid.

He forces himself out of his sleeping bag, legs trembling, and steps around Ryan, stands between Ryan and the corner of the room. He opens his mouth, takes a breath to ask something stupid like “who’s there” or even worse, “hello?” but never gets the chance.

Something barrels out of the shadows. Shane can’t move to get out of the way.

It will be a long time before Shane can move again.

#

Ryan jolts upright, air rushing out of his lungs and his forehead cooling with sweat. His heart jackrabbiting in his chest from a nightmare he can’t even remember anymore. He swallows, takes another deep breath, and glances to his side. True to form, Shane is asleep, snoring slightly in his sleeping bag. Shaking, Ryan looks around at the empty, dark cabin. He’s dimly surprised to see the barest signs of dawn blooming in the sky outside. He checks his watch. 4:45 a.m., not bad.

“Shane,” he whispers, and his throat is raw like he’s been screaming. But he hasn’t been, he is sure that Shane wouldn’t let him scream all night. He clears his throat and tries again: “Shane.”

Shane stirs then, groaning slightly. He turns to Ryan, blinking slowly as he surfaces out of sleep. “Whoa, holy shit,” he mumbles. “Did we actually get sleep in a haunted location? Is it the end times? Are you a pod person?” He sits up, ruffles a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. 

Ryan cracks an uneasy grin. “Yeah, I guess so,” he says. “I don’t even remember going to sleep, though.”

“Yeah, that’s generally how sleep works, Ryan,” Shane says impatiently. He stretches and his spine makes truly alarming popping noises. 

Ryan pushes himself out of his own sleeping bag, wincing at the cold, early-morning air. “Shut up,” he says like a reflex. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t even remember being tired, I remember thinking about how if I saw anything tonight I was gonna poop myself, and then...I guess I just blinked.”

Shane is already rolling up his sleeping bag and tying it in place. “Again,” he says, looking up from his work with a sarcastic grin, “sleep. That’s how it works. Or you had a massive, fear-induced heart attack that just knocked you out.”

“Ugh,” Ryan says, his repartee lacking until coffee. Shane is already finished, pulling on his shoes and fumbling a little bit with the laces. Ryan rubs his eyes, knocking his glasses slightly askew and says, “didja see any demons? Any...what’d you call them? Horny boys?” He adjusts his glasses and flashes Shane a grin that immediately falters.

Shane is staring down at him with a look he’d never seen before, all blank eyes and hard lines. Shane is tall, but not a particularly intimidating looking person, so this suddenly deadly-eyed expression wearing Shane’s face almost _doesn’t_ scare him. It’s so strange it’s almost funny. It would be, but Shane holds it too long to be a bit, and when he speaks, he sounds even and strange.

“What are you talking about.” It’s a sentence, not a question. Ryan immediately thinks back on what he said, trying to think of where he could have offended. When he comes back empty, he thinks maybe Shane didn’t hear him, and tries again.

“Y’know,” he says, standing up so that Shane isn’t _fully_ towering over him. “Demons. Horny boys. The Goatman? Dude, what’s wrong with you right now?”

Shane leans back, and Ryan can’t help but breathe a little easier. Blinking, Shane shakes his head, like he’s shaking cobwebs from his eyes. “Nothing,” he says. “I think I’m tired still. Not used to getting a full night with you in these places.” It’s weak, and insincere, but Ryan is willing to take it. He nods, files this conversation to obsess over later, and follows Shane into the morning air.

They’re in the back of the car, T.J. driving them to the airport. Ryan watches the forest speed by in silence. Mark has the radio down low, and over the faint strains of whatever song Mark chose, Ryan can hear the little chimes of cell phone notifications. He pats himself down until he realizes, no, it’s not his phone. 

It’s Shane’s, and it’s ringing with all the text messages and social media notifications that he must have gotten when they were both out of range. He’s looking at them, but he’s not answering any of them. Ryan watches with increasing confusion as Shane looks at the screen, and Ryan thinks he sees Sara’s name pop up, but Shane doesn’t move.

“Uh,” Ryan says. “You gonna look at those, big guy?”

“Ryan,” Shane snaps, his tone dark and ugly for a moment. Shane huffs out an aggravated sigh and when he speaks again, his tone is just impatient. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

Ryan frowns. “All right, Jesus,” he snaps back, too confused and sleep-deprived and butthurt to be patient with Shane right now. He crosses his arms, looks out the window, and doesn’t say anything for the rest of the trip.

#

Ryan doesn’t like conflict. It makes anxiety coil in his gut, and something like guilt crawl under his skin even when he didn’t actually _do_ anything. He’s not used to the silent treatment, so when Shane doesn’t really speak to Ryan for the rest of their _entire_ trip, despite Ryan’s attempts to just...pretend nothing was wrong, really gets under his skin.

By the time they share an Uber back to their respective apartments, however, the anxiety has transmuted to irritation. This is bullshit, he didn’t do anything, Shane was the one who snapped at him, and now he’s treating Ryan like he’s not even in the room. In the car. Whatever.

He mutters an angry farewell to Shane when he climbs out of the car, and pulls out his phone. The second most recent contact in his texts is Sara, and he shoots her a text with shaking fingers.

_Heads up: your bf is acting like a real dick. Might have slept wrong? Anyway, bewarb._

He hopes that the Gravity Falls joke will ease the bad news; he doesn’t want to come across like he’s shit-talking Shane to Sara. Even though that’s exactly what he’s doing. He just knows that if he were dating someone who acted like Shane did for the whole day and a half of travel, he would want to know about it. A ping alerts him to Sara’s reply:

_Thx. don’t worry im sure he still loves you :P_

He rolls his eyes, but can’t stop a grin from reluctantly spreading across his face. 

He feels a little better, but he’s still antsy, so he unloads all the SIM cards for the cameras and starts uploading. While he waits, he showers, he chats with his roommates, he throws his dusty clothes in the wash. The gnawing feeling of angry anxiety fades, but still throbs in the back of his mind, like a days-old pulled muscle. It’s not so much that it’s Shane, but he just...hates unresolved tension.

(What’s that John Mulaney quote? “I just need everyone, all day, to like me so much”? That’s Ryan Bergara, for better or for worse.)

When all the footage is uploaded, he settles down at his desk with a beer, soft pajamas, and some Netflix show in the background and begins reviewing. 

He can’t say that footage review is his favorite part of the whole process--it’s long, it’s repetitive, it’s a lot of looking at nothing. He probably _could_ select other team members to review it for him, but somehow that seems...unprofessional? A cop-out? Either way, it’s a task that Ryan feels he must shoulder himself, so he does. They have hours and hours of footage, and he knows he should review them chronologically, but there’s something nagging in the back of his mind that he wants to check out first.

He really doesn’t remember going to sleep that night. Despite what Shane says, he’s been living in his body for long enough to know when he’s on the verge of sleep. He’s pulled enough all-nighters to know what it feels like the next day when his body just quits on him in the middle of the night. He’s not an _idiot_. 

He pulls up the camera they set up in the cabin, up on a tripod across the room so it would catch both of them and the biggest sweep of the room around them as possible. The green cast of the night vision always makes them seem ghostly and pale, gives their eyes an eerie shine, like they’re dead men walking. A thrill of fear shivers up Ryan’s spine but he forces it down. This is just footage, he chides himself, it’s not like he’s never reviewed footage before. His leg is jiggling up and down and he lets it go, too intent on the footage to quell all his anxiety responses. He watches them settle in, exchange a few quips as Shane scoots into his sleeping bag. Ryan watches himself tuck his sleeping back up to just below his eyes, peering at his companion. The sound is down, so he can’t hear what his past self says to make Shane laugh, but he watches Shane throw back his head in mirth and Ryan can’t help but grin in real time as well.

He shakes his head. Maybe he’s overreacting. Maybe he just needs to sleep and drink some water and chill the fuck out. 

Idly, he presses fast forward and watches the time stamp speed through the 1:00 hour, then the 2:00 hour. At 2:50, Ryan sees himself suddenly still, uncannily quick in the fast-forward, and he stops the footage, backs it up a few minutes, and plays it in regular time, his fingers trembling. He watches as his past self scrolls on his phone, then jerks, looking over his shoulder like he heard something. He watches himself sit up, look to his right, across the room, then reach with his left hand for Shane.

Slowly, he watches himself lower his hand and mechanically wilt back onto the sleeping bag, as limp and boneless as a marionette with cut strings. Present-Ryan is shaking so hard he thinks he can hear his teeth chatter. His brain is a running litany of _holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,_ as he watches his past self’s breath even out to sleep. He watches the time stamp run for a few minutes, dreading the closer it gets to 3 a.m.

2:57...

2:58 ...

2:59 …

When Shane sits up at 3:00 a.m., Ryan almost screams. He certainly jumps high enough to almost fall out of his thrifted swivel chair. He punches the pause button and puts his hand over his head, breathing controlled and deliberate as though he was cooling down from a run. He wills himself to not freak the fuck out quite yet, that this was weird, but there’s nothing conclusive yet. He’s an _investigator_ , and as much as he likes to rag on himself, he takes his job pretty seriously. He is going to watch the video and he is going to find conclusive evidence before he freaks the fuck out.

Conclusive evidence for what, he’s not sure yet. Evidence as to whether he should lose his mind, maybe.

With shaking hands, he hits the space bar of his Mac, and the footage plays again. Shane is sitting up, scratching the back of his neck and yawning. Even from the grainy quality of the night vision camera, Ryan can recognize confusion in the set of Shane’s shoulders, in the way he looks around the room, as though Shane isn’t expecting to be up yet. Shane’s search of the room ends up with him looking at past-Ryan for a long moment, and present-Ryan can see a hint of a smile on Shane’s face. He looks fond, almost, and Ryan feels a little guilty. As though he is intruding on a private moment. 

But the moment passes when Shane looks up and freezes, his shoulders growing tense and his hands flexing against his sleeping bag. Ryan also freezes, like some kind of reciprocal instinct, until he follows Shane’s gaze in the footage.

There is something in the corner.

Ryan does gasp then, a scratchy, desperate sound that almost echoes in the empty room. He can’t...quite tell what it is, but something is there, standing in the corner of their room. By the fireplace. It’s like if shadows had substance, it’s like if the darkness between stars took form. Empty and full at once, something cold and unknowable stares Shane down in the middle of the night. That _asshole_ , why didn’t he say anything, why didn’t he wake Ryan up? 

Ryan knows the answer before his brain has time to finish the question. As he watches, helpless, past-Shane get out of his sleeping bag and walk, trembling, around a sleeping Ryan. He knows that at that time--at 3:02 a.m. last night--Shane doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. 

He watches, hands over his mouth, as Shane stands between Ryan and the shadow in the corner. He’s almost stepping on past-Ryan’s sleeping bag, for how close he is. Ryan feels that spike of guilt again, as though this is his fault, as though Shane was protecting him from the thing in the corner. He knows that’s not true, he knows that Shane thinks this is all bullshit, but he wishes and prays that Shane would have just woken him up.

The time stamp reads 3:03 when Shane seizes up, rigid where he’s standing. The shadow-thing sweeps out of the corner and flashes over Shane’s form for just a second, a blip on the footage, but it’s there, and Shane stands there, muscles spasming, hands opening and closing. It’s awful, Ryan thinks, it’s like watching someone die, and before it’s too much for Ryan to see, the time stamp switches to 3:04 a.m., and Shane’s body is relaxing. Ryan watches Shane stare at his hands for a moment, then softly walk back to bed, mechanically zip up his sleeping bag and go to sleep.

Nothing happens until 4:45 a.m. when past-Ryan jolts upright, gasping as though from a bad dream, and Ryan knows the story from there. He pauses the footage, leans back on his bed, and stares at the ceiling, his heart tattooing a beat of fear against his ribs. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ryan breathes, his voice shaky and hushed. He is shaking from head to toe, and he actually just cannot deal with whatever he just saw. Everything in him is screaming _possession_ , but for some reason, his mind shies away from it. Possession is something that happens to other people, something that they joke about under the watchful eye of a camera. Because you need belief to get possessed, don’t you? If Ryan was being honest, he always felt that if one of them was going to get possessed, it would be him. What with the superstitions, the fear, the...everything about him. Shane was too indestructible with his skepticism and his sarcasm.

(“I’m ghost proof, baby,” he’d said, and Ryan had laughed because Shane was such a _douchebag_ it was hard to not find it funny.)

“Okay, okay,” he tells himself. “Okay.” As pants-shittingly terrified as this is, Ryan knows he can’t just...fly off the handle. He forces himself to sit up, he pulls shaking fingers across the track pad, rewinds the footage until 2:55 a.m. and watches it all again. And again. And again.

He watches the whole ten minute section more times than he can count, dismisses it as being a blip in the camera. He googles “can someone have as seizure standing up” and discovers that, yes, you can. But Shane certainly would have remembered it the next morning. Also, he’s known Shane for years and never known him to have seizures. He googles nightmares and sleepwalking and various sleep disorders and some of them fit what he’s just seen-- _sort of_ \--but not enough to explain everything. 

He takes a deep breath and reaches for his phone. He figures that there’s one way to find out what happened to Shane, and that it’s the direct approach. The phone rings once, twice, three times before the other line picks up.

 _“Ryan,”_ Shane’s voice sounds foggy with sleep, but there’s none of that flat malice Ryan remembers from that morning. _“What? Did you see something spooky?”_

Ryan laughs, and he knows it sounds hysterical. “Yeah, you can say that again, buddy,” he says. “Hey, do you remember anything from the night we spent on location? Like, any funny dreams or anything?”

There’s a pause across the line. _“Why?”_ Shane asks, and yeah, he definitely sounds different now. Darker, maybe. Flatter. 

“Uh…” Ryan steels himself and barrels forward. “I found something crazy in the footage, man. It’s like...you were sleepwalking? Only there was something else in the footage and--”

 _“I sleepwalk sometimes,”_ Shane interrupts him, his tone clipped. Ryan freezes, because that is such a bullshit lie, he’s almost insulted Shane thinks he would buy that. _“Yeah, sorry man, I thought I told you. It doesn’t happen a lot unless I’m in really deep sleep, which I never am with you around. So.”_

“We have...definitely slept around each other enough that you would have done that around me, Shane,” Ryan says, irritation pushing aside his fear. “I’m telling you, it looks like something different is happening--”

 _“Ryan,”_ Shane snaps, and he sounds so...condescending and disgusted Ryan feels a reflexive rise of defensiveness. _“Listen to me for once in your life. I walked in my sleep, I did something weird. It happens. It’s not that complicated, I think you can wrap your head around it.”_

“Hey, don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” Ryan snaps back. “Fuck you dude, you’ve been a real asshole ever since we left the house and--”

 _“Just...shut up, Ryan,”_ Shane snaps, and there’s something else happening over the line, a sharp, staticky sound that shoots across the airspace, whining in Ryan’s ears. _“Just--so that--you--”_

“Shane?” Ryan asks, standing up and moving towards the window, just to grab the extra reception. “You’re breaking up. Shane?”

 _“--Mind your own business,”_ Shane’s voice came back, but it wasn’t really. It was darker, raspy and strange and it raised all the hair on Ryan’s arms. He shivers and swallows hard.

“Fine, whatever,” he says into the phone. And then, in some stupid sense of bravado, he says, “but I’m not giving up on this. Just so you know.”

 _“Goodnight, Ryan.”_ A click. Then silence.

There’s a heated moment where Ryan just stands there, looking at his now-blank phone screen like an idiot. He feels like he’s on the cusp of something terrifying. That something’s happened to his best friend, but it might be just a little bit too big for himself. He could, he thinks, just wait and do nothing and see what happens. Just explain it away until it becomes a non-issue. One way or another. He’s no priest, he hasn’t gone to Church in ages. He doesn’t exactly have all the power in this situation.

But he clenches his jaw and tosses his phone on the desk. Fuck that, he thinks, opening up Chrome on his computer. If something’s got ahold of Shane, Ryan has to do something. He has to _try_. He knows he can’t live with himself if he doesn’t try.

He Googles “signs of possession”. He spends hours weeding through wacky sites, movie reviews, and horror sites. He zones out the way he does when he’s researching material for Unsolved, and the detachment feels...good, almost. Like he’s back in control of this situation, like if he can find the right article with the right links, he can make this whole situation go away.

It occurs to him, distantly, that he’s handling this better than he thought he would. As he writes another note in the spiral bound notebook he pulled out of his desk, he thinks that maybe it’s just shock. And anyways, it’s not like he has to live with Shane or--

Oh god.

He freezes, scrambling for his phone again, and he has his thumb on the call button next to Sara’s name before he stops himself. Sara is a skeptic. She’s just as bad as Shane is when it comes to denying _perfectly reasonable evidence_ in favor of gently (and not so gently) mocking Ryan for his beliefs. If he called her right now, at almost 1 in the morning, talking about possession, at best she’d tease him a little before hanging up on him. At worst, she would get annoyed with him for waking her up, for making her boyfriend mad. He sighs, leaning back and chewing on his lip. But he wasn’t going to just _leave her_. If _his_ boyfriend was possessed, he would want to know!

Ryan didn’t...didn’t have boyfriends, but the point was still valid.

Finally, he opted to send Sara a text: _hey kinda got into it w shane, dont worry about it tho. I think he’s coming down w something. Lemme know if u need anything._

He doesn’t wait very long to receive a reply: _dw, he’s asleep now. It’s ok, he’ll be back to normal when he wakes up. Now stop worrying, ghoulfriend! Go 2 bed._

He gets the message. He plugs in his phone, closes his laptop and does a laughably bad job of trying to go to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind reviews, they soothe my anxious soul! A fun fact for you all about the place they visit, St. Ann's Resort, is a real place! There's a Ghost Adventures episode on it, and I really deeply want the ghoul boys to have an episode there. All the history about the night guards and the teens on halloween is true also! Check it out, it's wild.
> 
> Anyways, this chapter starts introducing some creepy stuff, some tension, Our Heros hiding in a props basement, and Shane being super mean bc there's something inside him making him say terrible shit. Ryan does some Holy Water wielding, and Sara yells at a demon and she doesn't even know it.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Sara gets Ryan’s first text message about fifteen minutes before Shane comes home, and it’s weird enough that she prepares for Shane to come home with the attitude of an angry bear. Instead, he comes home, mumbles something about being _extremely_ tired, and slumps off to bed, pausing to kiss her on the forehead before he disappears. Which isn’t...too bad. It’s not his normal mood post-trip, but it’s not angry bear status. Usually when Shane comes home from trips, he’s buzzing with exhausted energy, wraps her in a hug, talks excitedly about what they did, catches her up on jokes they made, makes plans for the three of them to hang out so Ryan can get her up to speed as well. Asks her about her projects, her art, her work. She usually has to shove him into bed before he knocks himself over.

She figures that whatever falling out Shane and Ryan had must’ve been more of a bummer than she thought. Not that Ryan’s Gravity Falls joke fooled her. She’s known both of them for long enough that she can tell when Ryan is trying to obfuscate, or when Shane is trying to avoid a conflict. They both hate fighting; it makes Ryan twitchy and makes Shane shut down. That’s probably what is happening now.

She’s doodling at the kitchen table when she hears Shane talking an hour or so later. She peeks into the room to see Shane sitting up in bed, his back to her, on the phone. She grins a little. It’s probably Ryan. They’re probably doing whatever stupid thing they do when they fight.

She steps back to leave when she hears Shane growl, “ _Mind your own business”_ and it sends a thrill of fear up Sara’s chest. She’s _never_ heard him talk like that, and he sounds so other, so different than the man she knows that she almost bursts into the room, almost makes him turn around so she can see the imposter wearing Shane’s clothes.

She doesn’t.

The lights in the kitchen flicker, and she jumps out of her skin, just barely keeping silent. She stumbles backwards into the kitchen where she leans against the counter and catches her breath.

“Okay,” she whispers to herself, breathless and fear thrumming through her body, singing in her blood. “Okay, so that was weird.” She takes a few more deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Once she’s more calm, she throws a nervous laugh into the air. Stupid. It’s late, she’s tired, and she’s all keyed up because her boyfriend is having a fight with _Ryan_. Like they’ve never fought before. 

She rolls her eyes at herself and bustles around in the kitchen for something to eat. She grabs a box of Rice Krispies and reaches her hand in, shoving dry cereal absently into her mouth, thinking about her next project, the emails she needs to send on Monday, when she sees Obi jump out from behind the couch, chirping at her. She smiles at her kitty.

“Hi baby,” she cooes. “Go to bed, Obster, I’ll be up soon. Go on.” She doesn’t know if cats can understand human speech, but she likes to pretend Obi does. It helps that Obi chirps at her again and then begins to trot towards the bedroom. She watches him out of curiosity she can’t place, as he walks to the bedroom. His pace slows as he approaches the slightly open door to the bedroom, and he flattens himself to the floor, his hair on his back standing on end. She frowns, watching him peer into the bedroom, arch up, and hiss loudly, turning and sprinting away to hide under the couch. 

“What--Obi?” Sara puts down the box of cereal and kneels down next to the couch, peering underneath it to see the little orange cat huddled at the farthest end, eyes wide and hair on end. Sara straightens up, leaning back on her heels and frowns. Even at his most skittish, Obi was never _this_ visibly terrified. He certainly didn’t hiss like that. And he’d done such a good job adjusting to their home! She sighed. She’ll have to look up cat facts in the morning, maybe it was normal for adopted pets to have some kind of kitty relapse.

Sara’s phone buzzes in her pocket and she jumps about a mile out of her skin. Pressing a hand to her chest, where her heart seems to be trying to make a break for it, she scoffs at herself. Ryan is rubbing off on her, she thinks with a grin. Her grin widens when she sees the text is indeed from Ryan Bergara. She’s some kind of psychic or something.

Her grin twists into worry when she sees what he’s said. She doesn’t really have time to babysit the boys whenever they have something emotional happen, but she does _like_ Ryan. She likes him a lot, and she likes it when everything is Just So. She doesn’t really have the energy or the context to give him advice, so she shoots him back a message she hopes is appropriately soothing and tells him to go to bed.

She yawns into her hand and decides that it’s about time for her to follow her own advice. She leaves her clutter on the kitchen table and brushes her teeth, washes her face, and generally putters around her nighttime routine. It’s not until she reaches her bedroom door that she realizes that she’s been stalling. The dark room before her yawns like an open maw, and something deep and instinctual rises up in her chest and tells her _stop, stop, danger_. 

“Ugh,” she scoffs at herself. This is stupid. She pushes the door open wider than necessary as a sign of defiance towards her own fears. Her heart pounds in her chest, but once the sliver of light widens, all she can see in the room is Shane, stretched out on his side of the bed, lightly snoring. 

“See?” she says to herself, stepping into the room. “Nothing to worry about.”

#

She doesn’t know why she wakes up at 3:00 a.m., but she’s going to lodge a fucking complaint. The red numbers of the alarm clock next to her blink reproachfully, as bright as the sun, as far as Sara is concerned. She is exhausted, but something like anxiety is speeding through her, like she’s waking up from a nightmare she can’t remember. She sits up and is alarmed to find she’s covered in sweat, making the sheets and her sweatpants and her tank top tacky against her skin.

“Gross,” she mutters, wiping her shaky hands and scrubbing her face. She turns to make sure she hasn’t woken Shane only to find him gone.

She fumbles for her glasses, hoping that maybe she’s just _that blind_ and that her boyfriend isn’t just vanished into the aether without her noticing. But when she puts on her glasses, the world comes into focus, and Shane is still gone.

“Fuck,” she mutters, concern and fear pushing her out of bed. She’s almost out of the bedroom when her good sense catches up with her. Shane is probably in the bathroom. He could be in the living room reading. He could literally do anything he wants right now, because it’s _their_ apartment and nothing’s wrong.

She shakes her head, roughs a hand through her curls, and turns to leave. She hears some noises from the bathroom, and for a moment it almost makes her feel better. See, her brain says, he’s just in the bathroom, it’s fine, it’s fine.

But the voice that whispers from the bathroom isn’t Shane’s. And her blood turns to ice. 

She takes a few steps back and rummages under the bed. Her scrabbling hand finds something hard and sturdy and she pulls it out. It’s a...okay, it’s just a grabber tool, from when Sara hurt her back and she didn’t want to get up to get things but was feeling too stubborn to ask Shane to help. Good enough.

She walks on tiptoe back towards the bathroom, her palms sweating, but when she peeks through the crack in the bathroom door, she sees...just Shane. 

Well. Not _just_ Shane. He looks like a nightmare. There’s a heavy ring of sweat around his shirt collar, and he looks as pale as death. His eyes are red-rimmed and he’s flushed like he’s been crying. Sara’s heart twists, and she goes to open the door, to ask him what’s wrong, but she sees him snarl into the mirror, and her heat jumps in her throat. Fear ices through her body, freezing her in place as she watches Shane hunch forward and snarl strange, hissing words into the mirror. She can’t place the language, but she’s not trying very hard because he starts spitting blood and saliva, like he bit his tongue, and it’s dribbling down his chin. Tears are streaming down his face, and she tries and fails to screw up the courage to open the door wider. She glances at the bathroom mirror and his eyes are pitch black.

Sara stumbles backwards, breath heaving in her lungs, and whatever Shane is hissing at his own reflection peters to a stop after a few more seconds. Sleepwalking, she thinks numbly. He must have been sleepwalking. She’s read about it; she knows you’re not supposed to wake someone up when they’re sleepwalking because they could hurt themselves. So she takes shaking steps backwards until she meets the threshold of the bedroom. 

Like a child running from monsters, she runs the last three steps to the bed and leaps into the covers, throwing them over her head and curls up like she’s asleep, still clutching the grabbing tool in her sweaty hands. She peeks out from under the covers and in the mirror across from her, she sees Shane’s silhouette framed in the doorway. Heart pounding in her chest, she forces herself to breathe evenly, to relax her trembling shoulders. Shane stands in the doorway for a little longer than natural, but eventually, he slumps forward, slouches towards the bed, and collapses on his side. He is snoring in seconds.

She looks at the clock. The time is 3:03 a.m. It is hours before she gets some sleep.

Shane sleeps all weekend, waking up only to have some water. Sara tries to get him to eat, but she admittedly doesn’t try very hard. She’s worried he’s getting sick, or heading for a breakdown, because every night he gets up to whisper in the bathroom mirror. She is prepared for a lot of things, but she needs to know if she should be preparing to take him to the hospital.

Monday morning, Shane doesn’t wake up fully and looks like death, so she calls into work for him and starts Googling things herself, and it’s nothing encouraging. Mental health is hard to diagnose through the internet, and the other options are things like epilepsy, brain tumors, strokes, and blood clots. She even Googles the symptoms of black mould, since he sleeps in so many fucked up old buildings. Some things are plausible. Lots of things are plausible. None of them fit quite right, but they’re enough to get her to worry. 

When she wakes up Tuesday morning and Shane isn’t in bed, Sara nearly has a panic attack. She throws off the covers and rushes out of the room, his name on her tongue when she sees him puttering around the kitchen, fully dressed. She stares at him for a moment while her brain catches up with what she’s seeing. He looks a little pale, and the dark circles under his eyes are more prominent than they usually would be, but he looks...normal. He’s in green pants and a white shirt and he looks so normal it’s a relief.

He catches her eye and gives her a soft, sleepy grin. “Hey there,” he says, and his voice is rough, but it’s from sleep and when she sees his teeth, none of them are pink from blood. “Did you sleep okay?”

The question catches her off guard, and she thinks about asking him. She thinks about bringing up his strange new night time ritual. But something stops her, so she just shrugs and says, “yeah, fine. How about you? You look...tired.”

Shane shrugs in return. “I might have caught some some kind of flu, or bug or something,” he replies easily. “But I think I’ve slept it off.”

Relief crashes over Sara like a wave. Just a bug. That’s all it was. He’s working too hard, he’s not being healthy and it caught up to him a little bit. He slept it off and now whatever this weekend was is going to be a funny story soon. Something to tell Ryan when they want to spook him. She is so relieved that she reaches over and wraps her arms around him, sighing contentedly and inhaling his familiar smell. Under her cheek, his chest buzzes as he laughs, sounding surprised.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he says lightly, “but what brought this on?”

She pulls away, shaking her head. “I think I just had a weird weekend too,” she says, smiling at him. “Want coffee?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m not feeling it today,” he replies, and that’s odd, but she shakes it off. She’s done with conspiracies and spooks. That’s Ryan’s job.

Speaking of Ryan, Sara is a little surprised she hasn’t heard from him all weekend. She supposes it’s because he and Shane are fighting, but it annoys her that he thinks this means that he can’t talk to _her_. They’re friends separate of his relationship with Shane, dammit, if she’s told him once, she’s told him thousands of times. She doesn’t know what kind of weird machismo nonsense he’s grappling with, but she feels a little abandoned after this weekend.

On the ride to work, she texts him: _hey ghoul boy. Shane did have some kind of weird bug, u were right. He seems fine today n were coming to work. U didnt have 2 ghost me all weekend tho._ She adds a ghost emoji and an alien emoji, because she’s hilarious. 

The reply back is almost instantaneous. _Sry i know ive been reviewing footage n doing research. Nothing to do w u i promise._

She almost feels at peace with the world until Ryan texts again: _has anything weird happened to u or him? Like around 3am?_

A chill runs up her spine as she thinks of the past few nights, of the whispers and the mouthfuls of blood. But it’s 7:30 in the morning and the air is fresh and Shane whistles along with the radio, and it’s so peaceful that she can’t bear to break it.

 _Nope,_ she texts back. _Can’t say i noticed anything._

She tucks her phone back into her pocket and tries not to feel guilty about lying to Ryan. She and Shane and Ryan are always in each other’s pockets so much that lying to Ryan feels about as shitty as lying to Shane would feel. But she knows that Ryan would flip the fuck out if she told him what happened this weekend. Maybe she should be freaking out more, she reflects. If it happens again, she promises herself, she’ll be more proactive. 

She works in a different part of the open floor office than Shane, so she has to trust that Ryan will watch out for him. It’s laughable, but she truly does trust that Ryan will have Shane’s back, as excitable as Ryan is. They’re a package deal, Shane said once, and Sara actually finds a lot of comfort in that. Someone else watching out for Shane when she’s not there.

Yeah, she thinks when she kisses Shane on the cheek and makes her way to her desk. They’ll be all right.

#

They are not going to be all right, Ryan thinks feverishly as he stumbles into work, feeling clammy and delirious after spending the whole weekend in the fugue state of research. The rest of the footage of St. Anne’s Resort were frustratingly calm, and Ryan doesn’t really want to air the potential possession to the internet before he can sort it out with Shane. He has a few days to decide, and to figure all this out, but it still has him on edge.

He thought about calling in today, because he isn’t sure if he can face a potentially-possessed Shane, but he has experiments to conduct. First one: coffee.

The canteen is blissfully subdued when Ryan approaches the coffee machines, and he’s grateful because he’s barely said 3 words in as many days and he’s not sure he can trust himself to be coherent just yet. His hand trembles as he pours coffee in two mugs, and because he’s seen too many movies where comical switch-a-roos happen, he pours Holy Water in both mugs. He knows it won’t hurt _him_ to drink it, and he hopes it won’t hurt Shane either. 

Even though he’s expecting to see him, Ryan still startles so hard when he sees Shane sitting at his own desk that he sloshes hot coffee over his wrists. Hissing, he somehow manages to not drop his coffee or Shane’s, but he does set both mugs down far harder than he intends. Shane blinks in surprise, looking up at Ryan with a look of amusement so familiar, Ryan instantly doubts himself.

“Hey bud,” Shane drawls, grinning lopsidedly at Ryan for a moment, before he grimaces, awkwardness flashing over his face. “Hey, actually I wanted to apologize. I was feeling really shitty that weekend and I took it out on you. I dunno if Sara told you, but I had some weird 24 hour bug and I went home and just crashed hard. But I was a huge dick, so.”

Ryan flounders, not expecting this at all. “Uh, uh…” Ryan stammers. “No, hey, thanks. That’s all right. I...I get it, man. Sometimes you just...feel shitty.”

Shane smiles gratefully, apology still on the edges of his expression. “Thanks,” he breathes. “Aw, and you got me coffee? You’re a good little guy, Bergara.”

“Hey, that’s me,” Ryan grins weakly. He takes a sip of his watery coffee and turns to his computer. Shane holds the mug, but he seems to become immediately distracted with his work. Ryan zones out, focuses back on his work, on answering emails in a timely manner and following up on some future appointments later in the shooting season. He’s not sure how much time has passed, but he glances over at one point, and Shane isn’t there. He looks around, craning his head and searching for Shane’s familiar tall figure. Panic shoots towards him when he can’t find Shane, and he jerks out of his seat, gets his headphones caught on the corner of his desk and almost knocks himself to the ground. He rights himself and powerwalks to Sara’s corner of the office. He is dismayed to find out that she’s alone.

“Hey, uh, Sara?” Ryan says, and doesn’t miss that how her eyes catch his, then slide to his side, clearly looking for Shane. He also doesn’t miss the worry that rises to her face. There’s something she’s not telling him. He knows this like he knows his own name. “Can I...have you seen Shane? He vanished a while ago, and I haven’t tracked him down.”

She stands up, almost with the same messy panic that Ryan did, and walks towards him. “No, he’s not here,” she says, rushed. “I haven’t seen him since this morning. Did you check the bathroom?”

“Uhh...no,” Ryan confesses. “No, my first instinct was to come find you. I’ll go…”

“I’ll come with you,” Sara says firmly. Then, she realizes what she says and flashes him a tight grin. “I mean, not into the bathroom, obviously. But, y’know.”

“Did something happen this weekend?” Ryan interrupts, walking with Sara to the bathrooms. “Like, for real?”

Sara shrugs, but there’s a defensiveness to her gestures and the set of her mouth. “He was sick,” she says, not looking at him. “Like I said, he mostly slept.” She sends him a sly glance and grins. “Why? Do you think he’s _possessed?”_

Ryan doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t say anything at all, and he is spared from Sara’s incredulous look and dismissive comment by walking into the men’s bathroom. 

The bathroom is empty, the doors to the stalls open and the urinals unoccupied. Still, Ryan calls, “Shane? You in here?” His voice echoes slightly against the tile and porcelain. He glances at himself in the mirror and is surprised to see how haggard he looks. There are bags under his eyes and his cheeks are pale and drawn. His hair is messy and he just looks...unkempt. He looks like he did in the early days of Unsolved, before he had a crew behind him. When it was just him and a computer, stressing over minutiae. 

“Am I just...stressed out?” he asks his reflection for a moment. He supposes his experiments will tell him the truth eventually. He leaves the bathroom.

Sara is waiting out there for him with crossed arms and a nervously tapping foot. “He’s not in the single stalls,” she reports, her voice clipped. “And I assume he’s not in there. So.”

Ryan runs a hand through his hair. “Why wouldn’t he...say anything,” he mutters. It’s not like Shane is beholden to either of them, he can do whatever he wants. It’s just unlike him to not say he was going to be gone for a while, especially if he’d spent the weekend as sick as he and Sara had said.

In his mind, he reviews the research he’d done in his head. Possessed people often had an aversion to light, and Buzzfeed had lots of large, tall windows with natural sunlight. But it wasn’t like that throughout the whole building. 

“Let’s...check out the prop basement,” Ryan says slowly. “I have...a hunch, I guess.”

Sara raises an eyebrow. “A hunch,” she echoes.

Ryan shrugs. “Unless you have a better idea,” he replies, but he knows she doesn’t, so he starts walking towards the elevators.

The lower levels of the building, where storage and old archives live, isn’t like the office floors. There are no windows and the hallway is lit by fluorescent light and it’s, on the whole, way creepier and more secluded. But there’s less natural light and Ryan is going off his research and, frankly, his instincts watching horror movies and investigating haunted locations. Sara hasn’t said anything since they got in the elevator, but Ryan can see the tension radiating off of her in the way she plays with her hair and fidgets with her fingertips. She usually has a pen in her hand, and her hands seem to be missing the absence.

They walk down the hallway silently, glancing into rooms periodically. After a while, Ryan is starting to doubt himself and suddenly Sara is grabbing his arm and dragging him into one of the rooms, hiding behind a door. He opens his mouth to say something, but Sara slaps a hand over his mouth, pressing against him. He can feel her heartbeat in her palm, and feel his heartbeat against his ribs.

Ryan hears muttering, groaning, and Ryan realizes with horror that it’s _Shane_. It sounds like he’s having a conversation with someone, and it’s heated and dangerous. Sara’s dark eyes are intense and afraid, but she’s not surprised, and Ryan spares a moment to be pissed because goddammit, he _knew_ something had happened. He glances at his watch. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon.

Slowly, Sara leans away from him to peer out the door, and Ryan does the same, peeking down the hall where he can just make out the figure out Shane, looking up at the fluorescent light directly above him and muttering. His nose is bleeding, Ryan notices, and he’s twitching like he did on the video. 

Abruptly, Shane gestures, and the light flickers off. In the dark, down a dim hallway, Shane’s profile looks...different. He looks larger and taller and contorted. A strange and stretched version of Shane that seems more predatory. The hair on the back of Ryan’s neck stands up, and at his side, Sara shivers. A light even closer to them flickers out as Shane walks underneath, and Ryan pulls Sara back into the room, where they huddle behind the door until the wave of darkness passes them, and Shane, now silent, disappears. 

Ryan waits, holding onto Sara’s shoulders, until the elevator bell dings and the doors woosh close. He breathes a sigh of relief, sagging against Sara’s shoulder, shaking. She looks pale and shaken as well, and they look at each other for a moment, breathing heavily in tandem, trembling in each other’s arms.

Sara pulls away first, tucking a curl behind her ear and crossing her arms. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she says like a confession. “But I think Shane needs to see a therapist.”

“A therapist--Sara,” Ryan tries not to yell. “Sara, I need you to look at some footage from the other night--”

“No, Ryan,” Sara says firmly. “I don’t...look, I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m not gonna immediately jump to possession. I don’t believe in that, and neither does Shane.”

“I know, I know,” Ryan says. “I know. I...I’m not trying to…” He’s stammering, because he’s scared and he’s stressed and Sara is still in his space and he just wants everything to be okay. “I’m...I’ll investigate this on my own. It’s gonna be okay.”

Sara gives him a lopsided grin. “Dare I ask what your investigations are?” she asks, a lilt of teasing in her voice, and Ryan can’t help but mirror her smile.

“Holy water in the coffee,” he says it like a confession and they both have to laugh a little bit. “And I put a ring of salt around the desk. Just to see. Though I think that works for fairies more than demons, actually. And I have this,” he reaches into his hoodie and pulls out a rosary. It’s old and made of wood and belonged to his grandma, and she gave it to him during his confirmation. It’s been blessed more times than he can count, and he rarely takes it on investigations, because it’s more of a personal, at-home protection. 

“Very nice,” Sara says, still laughing a little. “Very traditional.” Her slender, pale fingers touch the rosary gently. She laughs then. “I think I have a Magen David somewhere, should I start wearing it too?” She quirks an eyebrow and her smile grows bigger. He laughs too, just so the pressure has somewhere to go.

“I’ll let you know,” he says. “Maybe, just to be safe. Are Jewish exorcisms a thing? Are Jewish _demons_ a thing?” He’s embarrassed he doesn’t know this. Sara shrugs.

“Not really,” she says. “I mean, I know there are demons, and the kabbalah is nuuuuuts, but possession and exorcism aren’t super big things like in Catholicism, y’know?”

Ryan considers this. He’s almost envious. “Well,” he shrugs. “We skipped lunch spying on your boyfriend. Do you wanna grab something, and maybe bring it back to him?”

“Are you gonna spike it with Holy Water?” Sara quips back as they hurry back to the elevator. Ryan laughs and shakes his head.

“I don’t have any more,” he laughs. “I used it all on the coffee.” 

They laugh as the elevator opens to the lobby, sunlight streaming through the windows. It isn’t until Ryan steps out into the sun that he realizes how heavy the air had been down there, how close and oppressive it had felt down in the archives. It was in line with his research, for sure, but...it wasn’t proof. Nothing concrete yet.

They took the long way to a deli on the corner, joking about nothing, working very hard to talk about everything other than their fears about Shane. They talk about Sara’s art, and Ryan’s research, and complain about supervisors. It feels normal, and Ryan hasn’t felt normal in three days. It feels...nice.

The shadow of the Buzzfeed building falls on them at the end of their lunch walk and so does the proverbial shadow of their fears. They even stop before the double doors at the entrance and look up, as though they’re expecting to see Shane staring down at them through one of the windows. Of course they don’t. Ryan shakes himself, takes a deep steadying breath. It’s not as simple as that.

Shane is sitting at his desk when Ryan and Sara get up to their floor. He looks pale and sweaty, like he’s been throwing up, but when Sara calls to him, he looks up with a smile. His smile falters, however, when he looks at Ryan, and for a second, Ryan doesn’t understand why.

“So what’s _that_?” Shane asks, gesturing with his chin at Ryan’s chest. He says it like Ryan has brought some kind of dirty wild animal into the office. Like he’s done something inconvenient and stupid. Ryan blinks, looks down, and realizes. His rosary is hanging out of his hoodie collar, dangling around his neck. Ryan’s pulse picks up; it couldn’t...possibly be that, could it?

He glances at the coffee cup he gave Shane hours ago. It’s untouched. By now, Shane should be on his fourth cup at least. Shane, unfortunately, catches his glance and stares down at the mug himself. Suddenly, he laughs, two staccato chuckles that sound colder than anything Shane has said before.

“You’re really something, Bergara,” Shane says, shaking his head. He looks disdainful, and Ryan almost takes a step back as the force of this unfamiliar, withering gaze hits him square in the chest. “I mean, I guess I feel like I put up with a lot around you, and this is pretty piss-poor repayment.”

Ryan _does_ recoil then, embarrassment prickling into anger and hurt. Sara’s mouth has dropped open in shock and outrage, but Ryan speaks first. “Fuck you, man,” he snaps. “It’s a rosary, don’t act like I’m pissing on your leg or anything. It’s a family heirloom.”

“How _nice_ ,” Shane sneers. “It’s a family heirloom. It’s a family heirloom, everyone!” Shane raises his voice, and the office at large now is watching them, a collective gaze of curiosity and concern. “It’s definitely not because Ryan Bergara finally figured that his show isn’t exciting enough and wants to drum up some _drama._ Some theater!” To their left, at another desk, a coffee mug explodes, shards of ceramic fly everywhere. Ryan is sure someone must be filming this.

“Shane, you need to go home,” Sara says, her face red and livid. She steps up to Shane, who stands up slowly. Ryan is struck then at how small Sara is compared to Shane. How even as she cants her chin up and puts her hands on her hips, that Ryan is afraid for her. He shifts his stance, brings his hands forward ever so slightly. He’s not sure what he’s preparing for, he knows that Shane Madej would _never_ hit Sara. He would never hurt her. Would rather die than hurt Sara. But Ryan isn’t sure what is wearing Shane’s skin right now.

Shane looks up over Sara’s head as Ryan’s shoulders square. He blinks, and for a moment, Shane’s eye are entirely black. Ryan couldn’t scream even if he wanted to, his throat is dry with fear, and his breath is stolen away. He wishes he could speak, could point, could yell _see, see, I told you_. But he is frozen on the spot.

“ _Shane_ ,” Sara’s voice is firm and insistent. “I’m serious. Go home. I’ll email HR for you, but you need to go home before you get fired.”

Shane stares down at Sara for a moment, a snarl half forming on his face, and Ryan can’t breathe. He doesn’t know how Sara can stand under Shane’s scrutiny like this, doesn’t know how she doesn’t look afraid when Shane is giving her such a strange and cruel expression. But finally, Shane brushes past both of them. Ryan watches as Shane catches an elevator and the doors slide close on his shadowed face.

The office is so quiet, Ryan is sure he can _hear_ what everyone must be thinking. He turns and glares until everyone moves again, chattering in that determined way people do when they want to pretend nothing happened. Sara is still standing there, but Ryan can see her shoulders tremble and he hesitantly moves towards her. He puts a hand on her shoulder and she sighs, swiping at her face. When she turns to him, her eyes are bright and her face is flushed, but if she was crying, she isn’t anymore.

“Sorry he said that to you,” she mutters. “I’ll get to the bottom of this. Just...that wasn’t him.” She brushes past him without another word and pushes the door to the single use bathroom open. Ryan’s heart constricts as she shuts herself into the bathroom and he is left, clenching his fists helplessly, the coffee cup full of holy water untouched and his rosary out. The salt circle has been kicked over during the motion of the day. He collapses in the chair and rubs his forehead.

“I hope it wasn’t, Sara,” he murmurs. He’s not sure which option is worse. He supposes he’s going to find out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lkhjsdkjdsa a day late posting this chapter, sorry!!! Anyways, in this chapter, Sara confronts "Shane", and they have a conversation that is based off of entirely fake information. The idea was to have the demon know something Sara never told anyone, so obviously I had to make stuff up. It's a short bit, but it references the potential suicide or at least dangerous depressive episode of an entirely made up friend Sara had in high school. Please be aware of this going into the chapter!
> 
> Also, there's...so much crying. There's tears for days pretty much from here on out.

Sara comes home from work _furious_. More than ever, she is becoming convinced that Shane needs some kind of help, but his taunting words and Ryan’s hurt, fearful expression haunts her better than a ghost ever could. Mental breakdown or not, she’d never seen Shane act that way in all the years that she’d known him, and she wasn’t going to let it slide.

She pushes open the apartment door with her whole body, slamming it open with her rage. Seeing Shane just sitting at the kitchen table, as though he is waiting for her, with a blank expression on his face just stokes her anger hotter.

“You were _way_ the fuck out of line today,” Sara snaps, trembling with fury. She clenches her fists until her fingernails are cutting into the palms of her hands. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Shane tears his eyes away from the middle distance he’s staring into and says, “Ryan Bergara needs to learn to mind his own business.” He sounds so strange and unaffected that she wants to cry. 

“Ryan Bergara is your best friend,” she snaps. “And one of mine. If he’s bothering you so much, there are better ways to handle it instead of yelling at him in the middle of the work day, Shane! You owe him an apology.”

Shane barks out an ugly laugh. “I owe him--” he shakes his head and stands up suddenly, knocking the chair to the ground. “I _owe_ him? I don’t owe him anything.”

Sara’s eyes sting with tears, angry and helpless, and she shakes her head. “What is wrong with you?” she repeats, her voice a thick, tearful whisper. “This isn’t like you at all. I’m--I’m furious with you and I’m _worried_ about you, Shane.”

Shane looks at her for a long moment, tilting his head to one side, and then the other. He looks like Obi when he’s hunting feather toys. Except Shane isn’t a kitten, and Sara doesn’t want to feel like prey. His dark brown eyes are hooded, and Sara doesn’t recognize whatever’s behind them. It’s like there’s a stranger wearing his skin, and it makes Sara burn with protective anger and fear.

“Oh,” Shane says, baring his teeth. “You’re worried about me. You think I’m having a mental breakdown? Having a meltdown that you can’t stop, that you can’t help? At least you notice this one, right? Not like the last time someone you cared about crashed into insanity.”

Sara’s blood runs cold and her heart stutters in her chest because _no, no, Shane doesn’t know about--_

“About Emily?” Shane sneers, like he’s read her thoughts, and even the name sends tears to Sara’s eyes. “Your little high school friend who just couldn’t take the pressure? And you didn’t even know she was sad until it was too late.”

A ragged sob rips through Sara’s throat and she bares her teeth, tears streaming down her face. “How could you know about that?” she demands, voice thick with tears and anger and fear. “How could you--I never told you--I never told…”

“And what does that say about you, Sweetest Sara?” Shane growls, stepping towards her, looming. “Keeping a secret like that from someone you love? How am I supposed to confide in you, if you don’t confide in me? Hm? What do you say to _that_ , Sara?”

“Fuck you,” Sara snaps, crying despite her best efforts. “I’m...I’m going out. Don’t fucking call me. Leave me alone.”

She steps out of the apartment and slams the door shut behind her. She marches all the way to her car and puts the key in the ignition before she fully loses it, sobbing raw and wrenching tears into the steering wheel. She cries for whatever is happening to Shane, she cries for Ryan, and she cries a little bit for herself as well, because she wants to do the right thing, but she doesn’t know what that is anymore. 

For all of Ryan’s superstitions and fears and quick assumptions, he always seems to know what to do. Somehow, he always seems assured in his morality, in what the right thing to do must be. She’s not sure she believes that Shane is possessed, but she thinks she needs to be around someone who has more answers than she does. She presses his contact picture with trembling fingers, and she only waits two rings before he picks up.

_“Sara? Are you okay?”_ he asks like he knows the answer already, like he’s already putting on his shoes, and it makes her want to cry all over again.

“I’m not saying I believe you,” she says, her voice thick and congested. “But I’m ready to listen a little more. Can I come over?”

_“Of course,”_ he answers without hesitation. _“Do you...do you need anything? Should I pick up some food?”_

It is dinner time, but she’s not hungry. She feels nauseous and jittery, and the idea of food makes her want to throw up. “No,” she says. “No, I just...don’t wanna be home, and I’m tired of not knowing the answers to what’s going on. So.”

_“Okay, see you in a few then,”_ Ryan says, and she can hear the unasked questions on his tongue, but is grateful that he knows her well enough to not ask. She puts the car in drive and pulls away from the apartment. 

#

When Sara shows up at Ryan’s door, he knows something happened. Her face is red and puffy and her eyes are bloodshot like she’s been crying. But she also lifts her chin and sets her jaw and Ryan knows that he can’t ask. That maybe, if he’s patient and doesn’t push, she’ll tell him herself. He’s not good at being patient, but he is willing to try for her.

She comes in, flashes an almost-convincing smile to his roommates, and they post up in Ryan’s bedroom, where his research is piled up over his bed and desk. She looks around, her sharp gaze taking in everything with scrutiny.

“I think...I owe you an apology,” she says, and it’s the most unexpecting thing she could have said and Ryan is left gaping like an idiot. Sara grins weakly and explains, “I always just assumed that this was an off the cuff thing for you. Superstition and all this possession stuff. But you’re taking this really seriously.”

“Of course I am,” Ryan replies quietly. “It’s Shane. And it’s you. Besides, there’s lots of evidence to find, and a lot of things to rule out, still. I’m...glad you came.” He feels shy, inexplicably, which is stupid since he and Sara have hung out tons of times on their own. They’re friends too. 

Sara gently moves aside some papers and sits down on the edge of his bed, rubbing at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t care,” she says, looking up at him with her dark blue eyes, “I know that you care about Shane just as much as I do.” There’s a weight to her words that Ryan can’t quite place, or maybe he can, he just isn’t brave enough. 

He runs a hand through his hair, tugs it absently, and says, “I care about both of you.” He hopes she can sense the same weight in his words. He hopes that someday they can talk about this for real.

Sara smiles at him and picks up the nearest piece of paper. She glances over it before showing it to Ryan; it’s a list of numbers. “What’s this?” she asks.

“Ah, I called some places,” Ryan says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like, some people who did exorcisms or dealt with possessions. Lots of scams, and lots of people who sounded legit, but couldn’t help us because Shane isn’t religious.” That had been frustrating. “Which is...weird, I guess. Is it the faith of the exorcist or the faith of the victim more powerful? I thought it wouldn’t matter what the victim believed.”

“Yeah,” Sara says, frowning slightly. “That’s what I got from movies anyways.”

“Well either way,” Ryan says, unable to linger on the thought that Shane’s faith--or lack thereof--is what’s keeping him like this. “We still have to establish beyond doubt that Shane is possessed. Here’s the criteria that I’ve narrowed down from my research.” Ryan holds up one finger, “one: they can’t control themselves; like, the subject can’t control their temper or says stuff where they usually would have a filter.”

“Like today when he yelled at you,” Sara murmurs, her eyes hooded. 

Ryan nods, the sting of Shane’s words still fresh against his chest. He holds up a second finger, “two: completely different personality. I think that one’s a given. Shane is definitely not acting like the same guy he was before we went to St. Anne’s.”

“He has his moments, though,” Sara argues. “This morning, he was fine. And he apologized to you and everything. He just said he was sick.”

“I know,” Ryan says, sighing. “I know, but honestly? A few moments of normalcy isn’t enough for me to not count this out.” He holds up the third finger: “a third is different voice, which can happen in conjunction with the normal voice or completely taken over. I definitely heard something in the hallway at work, didn’t you?”

Sara nods, and she stares to the side, fiddling with the bedspread. She looks like she wants to tell him something, but she’s battling with herself. It’s frustrating, but it also hurts. Ryan had always hoped that Sara would know to trust him.

“Sara,” he says softly. “Has something...else happened? Something that you might not be able to explain? I promise I won’t freak out,” he adds like a joke, and she smiles even though it isn’t that funny.

She sighs, tugging at her curls. “Yes,” she says heavily. “He...gets up at night, and he talks to himself in the mirror. I thought...when it first happened, I thought it was a different person who was in the house. But it was just him.”

Ryan...wants to freak out really, really badly. He wants to absolutely lose his goddamned mind. But he doesn’t, because he promised Sara he wouldn’t. So he takes a deep breath, and another, and says, “okay. Cool, cool. Yeah. So, uh, that’s good evidence for the third point in my research. Does he...is there a time he does this?”

“Three in the morning,” Sara says, and she sounds resigned, like she knows what this sounds like. Which...Ryan can’t imagine what _else_ it could possibly sound like. 

“Hoo,” Ryan says, intelligently. He clears his throat. “Okay, well. Um. Okay. What was I saying? Fourth thing! Fourth thing.”

“You’re doing a real good job not freaking out,” Sara says dryly, and Ryan has to laugh a little at that. 

“Hey man,” he says. “I could be way worse right now.”

Sara laughs. “That’s true,” she says. “Okay, tell me the fourth thing.”

“Right! Uh, this one’s kinda weird, but it’s supernatural knowledge,” Ryan explains. “That’s, like, somehow knowing things that he’s never known before. Personal secrets, stuff like that. Has he…” Ryan trails off as Sara’s eyes fill with tears again, shining in the light of the bedroom. She looks up at him, and her face tells her everything he needs to know. Absurdly, the idea that Sara had her personal secrets thrown in her face makes Ryan furious. A hot wave of rage washes over him, and he has to actually concentrate on not clenching his fists or his jaw. 

“Okay,” he says after a while, his voice still tight. “So. Those are the four big indicators. There are other ones like supernatural strength or new abilities they didn’t have before, but it all falls under those categories. I think...we have at least a good indicator that it’s a possibility.”

“Or he could just...be getting sick,” Sara argues, wiping her face. “Like, mental illness sick. There might be a history of mental health problems in his family, and it’s not weird to have symptoms manifest in your late twenties to early thirties.”

Ryan can’t really argue with that, and he wonders if his insistence that it’s possession just shows his deep fear of something he truly can’t fix. “Can you...find out if he’s got family stuff?” he asks awkwardly. “I mean, I can call Sherry, but I think it’d be less weird if you did it.”

“Yeah, I’ll call his mom tomorrow,” Sara agrees readily, and Ryan suspects she’s just glad to have something to do, a task that isn’t just waiting for the next new horror to show up.

“Uh,” Ryan says, shifting his notes. “Speaking of mental illness, there is...one other thing that I noticed when I was doing my research.” This sat heavy in his heart, like a weight tied down to his ribs. He twisted his hands and stared at the papers to avoid looking at Sara. “Often, in cases of possession, the victim has been...driven to kill themselves. And obviously Shane has never shown a tendency towards that sort of thing,” he adds hastily, his heart racing like he was afraid that saying it would make it come true. “But...we’re already worried about his mental health anyways. Demons or not, it can’t hurt to...watch out for that more closely.”

Sara nods, her shoulders wilting like stalks bending in the wind. She puts her face in her hands for a moment, breathes in and out, and then straightens up again. “Good plan,” she says hoarsely. “I’ll...do my best. I’ll look out for that.”

“I’m here,” Ryan blurts out, only half-knowing what he’s trying to say. “Like, you don’t have to handle this all on your own. I’m here for you and I’m on board. I want to help him, too. I…” Horrifically, Ryan is concerned that he’s going to start crying. He scrunches up his face and grits his teeth until the moment passes. “I miss my friend,” he says quietly. “Whatever else I feel right now, I miss him, and I’m scared for him too. And...I guess what I’m saying is that we can be scared together.”

Sara looks at him for a moment and then flies towards him, disrupting his stacks of paper. She is pressing against his chest and wrapping her arms around his chest before he really understands what’s going on. His arms close around her automatically, and he notes with alarm that she’s already crying, grief and stress cracking her down the middle and laying her out before him. He’s just as alarmed to find that he’s crying too, shaking and sniffling into her shoulder, her curly hair. He’s _scared_ , he’s so fucking scared and confused and he wants to fix things and he can’t. He can’t fix things yet, but he’s so tired of waiting he could scream. 

They hold each other and cry for an indeterminate amount of time, and when they pull apart, Ryan’s shirt is damp and Sara’s hair is tousled but Ryan feels… If not better, he at least feels scooped out and clean. Like he’s hit some kind of hard reset in his brain and now can move forward. He looks at Sara and she gives him a watery, exhausted smile and he can tell she feels the same way.

“You can stay over, if you want,” Ryan says impulsively. “Just...you can take the bed, I’ll take the couch. If you want to...keep not being at your apartment.”

Sara looks thoughtful, a slow and pensive look settles on her face before she shakes her head. “No, I think I should be home,” she says quietly. “Either way, you were right, we need to watch out for him. Tomorrow, I’ll call his mom. Ask about...all that stuff.” She yawns, tilting her head back with the force of it. “Can I text you? If something...comes up, I dunno.”

“You can call me,” Ryan asserts, nodding. “Text me when you get home, call me if you need anything, I’ll come right over.” He is nervous to let her go, he realizes. But he also knows that he won’t be able to change Sara’s mind, even if he tried. 

So he lets her go. He watches her pick up her things and slip on her shoes. He tries not to read into it when she touches him on the cheek, a feather-light touch, before she is gone. He rubs at his eyes and leans back in his bed, his body not sure if it wants to sleep or cry. He pushes all his research to the floor, because he doesn’t care about anything right now, and he rolls over until he is facedown on his bed. Sleep overtakes him before he can even turn the light off.

He dreams.

_There’s something in the corner of the room, there’s something standing in the corner of your room and you do not dare to look at it. You do not dare turn to see it because if you do, something terrible will happen. You are frozen, trembling, staring straight ahead, staring out the window of the cabin, into the darkness of the forest where trees and creatures press in at all sides. They are waiting for you to run so they can devour you, but if you stay, you will be enveloped by the thing in the corner of the room. Sweat ices down the back of your neck and you feel yourself turning, against your will, against your judgment, against all instincts because your body is not your own. You are turning to face the thing in the corner of the room, and you know that if you see it with your eyes you will die, you will die, you will die--_

Ryan jerks up, gasping for breath. It takes him a wide-eyed moment for him to understand that he isn’t back in St. Anne’s Resort, he’s home in his bed. The lights are on, and he’s still in his jeans, and sweat has made a dark ring around the collar of his t-shirt, but he’s not at St. Anne’s anymore. His heart is beating so hard against his ribcage, he is genuinely afraid that he is going to have a heart attack. He presses his hand to his sternum and breathes carefully, in and out, until he feels himself calm down. 

“Jesus,” he pants, rubbing at his face. On instinct, he reaches for his phone, seeking distraction. Instead, he sees two image texts from Sara, and when he opens them, his heart jack-knifes again. 

On his phone screen is Sara’s pale hand, holding two bloody molars. The edges of the picture are blurry, as if her hands had been shaking while she took this picture, and Ryan can’t blame her. The other picture is a handful of fine brown hair, too light and straight to be Sara’s.

_found this in the bathroom by the trash can after he did his creepy bathroom ritual holy shit ryan i dont know what to do_ Sara writes, and Ryan wishes he didn’t know what he does.

_don’t yell at me_ he types back, _but in the final stages of possession, the body starts to decay bc it’s rejecting the demon inside of it._

_What the fuck does that even mean??_ Sara writes back instantly.

_It means we dont have a lot of time._

Sara doesn’t reply back, and Ryan puts his head in his hands for a moment. The time stamp on Sara’s pictures read: 3:03 a.m. 

#

Ryan doesn’t see Sara in the morning when he first comes in, because she works in another part of the building, and he thinks that it would seem weird to just keep showing up by her work space for no reason. They _do_ still have to do work at Buzzfeed, and he’s not sure his boss would be super understanding of “sorry I did literally nothing this week, it’s just that Shane’s been possessed by a demon, but I have to get enough proof that his skeptic girlfriend will believe me.”

Also--and this thought feels almost weirder--he doesn’t want Shane to get suspicious. It feels dirty and dishonest, and Ryan hates lying to Shane, but he thinks that if Shane suspected that Sara believed Ryan, even a little bit, it might mean trouble for her. And Ryan is not about to put Sara in danger.

So he doesn’t go find Sara, but he does have to sit right next to Shane, who is at his desk today and looks...like he’s died already. He’s pale, almost blueish, except for his red-rimmed eyes, which are low and sunken into his face. His cheeks are hollow and his lips are cracked and dry. He just looks dull, like the saturation on a picture pulled down low, and it makes Ryan’s heart clench. Shane’s body is dying, Ryan realizes with a chill. There is something inside Shane that is killing him faster than mental illness, or a brain tumor. 

He stares too long, and Shane catches his look, and when they meet eyes, Ryan truly doesn’t recognize Shane’s gaze. His eyes look like dull marbles from under the shadows of his brow, and it’s so _foreign_ and so _galling_ that Ryan is filled with stupid, righteous anger. He squares his shoulders, marches to his desk and sits down next to Shane, who watches him, but says nothing.

“I know things are rough right now, big guy,” Ryan says, his voice quiet and firm. He feels...purposeful, for the first time in this mess. It’s like he’s forgotten that the one person suffering more than he or Sara is Shane himself, and that’s untenable to him. “I don’t even pretend to know what’s happening. But I need you to listen to me right now, Shane, okay?” He stares directly into Shane’s dull brown eyes, emotion filling his chest. “I am _not_ giving up on you, okay? I’m not giving up. Not in a million years. I promise you that.” He swallows against a lump in his throat, and blinks furiously before tears can even think about falling. “We’re a package deal, remember?”

Shane doesn’t react; the silence between them stretches from a few seconds to a minute, and Ryan realizes that he can hear Shane’s wheezing breaths, whistling slightly like he’s got mild asthma, or a cold. He wants to call out the demon, right here in the middle of the office, because he knows that it’s playing nice right now, it’s dormant and gathering its strength and leaving this walking dead man in its wake. But he keeps his mouth shut, turns to his computer, and tries to answer emails.

He eats a late lunch by himself. Sara sent him a text saying she was all right, but was going to call Shane’s mom and take a walk to get her head on straight, so Ryan tucks himself into a corner of the canteen and mechanically chews on a granola bar long after the lunch hour is passed. He doesn’t want to interact with people right now; all their mutual friends have sensed something is wrong, and he doesn’t think he has the mental fortitude to come up with lies right now. He’s scribbling notes to himself when he sees a familiar shape walk past, towards the elevators. Ryan watches as Shane takes an elevator pointed downwards, and he assumes that Shane is going to argue with the demon inside of him in the basement.

Before he can consider following him, Ryan gets a call. Seeing Sara’s name on his screen is both a relief and anxiety-inducing. With a shaking thumb, he slides the phone icon across his screen to answer. “Sara,” he breathes. “What’s up?”

_“I just got off the phone with Sherry,”_ Sara says, her voice sounding as weary as Ryan felt. _“I’m pretty sure I worried her, but as far as she knows, there’s no real history of mental health problems in Shane’s background. Not a lot of physical health problems too, either. Both sides of Shane’s family are, as far as we know, fairly healthy.”_

Ryan huffs out a sigh, feeling both vindicated and terrified. “And yet he’s losing teeth,” he says. “And I saw him this morning, he’s literally dying, Sara.”

_“Not even a brain tumor looks like this,”_ she says, despair clear over the line. _“But, Ryan, I can’t just...accept that my boyfriend is possessed by a demon. This isn’t Insidious, okay? This isn’t a spooky story.”_

“What about all this makes you think that I am playing a game right now?” Ryan snaps, the constant friction of beliefs finally rubbing him raw. “I know this isn’t a fucking movie, Sara, okay? I’m just...I’m scared! What do _you_ think we should do?”

_“Fucking...I don’t know, Ryan!”_ Sara snaps back. _“We can’t all just...change worldviews at the drop of a hat!”_ she takes a deep, steadying breath. _“I know that you’ve been the only one here with a solution, and I can’t come up with anything, but…”_ she sniffles, and Ryan regrets snapping at her. _“Dude, this is too much. It’s too much to suddenly believe all at once.”_

“Sara,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what else to say. How else can I…” he trails off, thinking hard. He’s offered to show Sara the footage before, and she refused. But maybe this time she’d be willing to see. Just to see.

_“Ryan? Are you okay?”_

“Sara,” he says, leaping to his feet. “Meet me in soundbooth three, as soon as possible. I think it’s time you see the footage. Please.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT HAPPENS. It also introduces some of my research with regards to Jewish mysticism and Catholic exorcisms, and those tenants will be carried through the rest of the story. PLS NOTE: i am raised Catholic, but am not Jewish. I have had this gently perused by a Jewish friend, but obviously that is not the same thing! if any of the information below is wrong, let me know and I will adjust it in this and future chapters. Thanks for your patience!!
> 
> Thanks also for your kind reviews! I am v happy that everyone reading it seems to enjoy it ^_^ if you want to talk to me in other areas, my tumblr is goat-man-entrapment!
> 
> On with the show.

Sara is in soundbooth three at her job as a content creator at Buzzfeed’s Los Angeles office when she sees evidence she can’t explain of a demon possession.

Maybe a few days ago, a week ago, she could explain it. She could say that the strange darkness in the corner of the cabin was a fluke of the lighting compounded with the night vision camera’s poor video quality. She could say that Shane jerking upright and walking towards the shadow was sleepwalking. She could even sort of say that the frightening spasms that wracked his body were a nightmare, or latent epilepsy. She _still_ could say that, and she knows Ryan couldn’t technically refute her.

But sometimes there are moments when you _just know_ something. And Sara, watching this footage, _just knows_ that she is watching her gentle, kind, stupid boyfriend get possessed by something supernatural. Something unknowable enters Shane’s body, and she is _so angry_ because it had no _right_. Silent, furious tears slide down her face, fog up her glasses, and she is too angry to even wipe them away, so she just stands there, arms tightly crossed around her chest, fists under her arms and trembles.

Ryan pauses the video and sighs, rubbing his eyes. She feels angry _for_ Ryan, also. Ryan, who has shouldered this alone for days, who was too kind to _make_ Sara see what she didn’t want to see. Who labored through books and articles and made phone calls to priests for her and for Shane. She’s furious he was so kind. She’s angry that he’s so scared and that she wasn’t there.

She puts a hand on his arm and squeezes. She thinks she wants to apologize, but she can’t find the words and when he puts a hand over hers, she knows he doesn’t need to hear it anyways.

“So,” she says, clearing her throat and scrubbing at her face. “What do we do?”

Ryan looks at her like she’s a blessing, a personal benediction. She wonders how he can be so loose with his emotions. She also hopes he never stops. “You believe me?” he says, quietly, as though if he’s too loud she’ll take it away.

“Yeah,” she says, and dammit, she actually means it. She has no idea what to do now, and her whole world is turning upside down, but she believes Ryan Bergara, and she’s gonna do what she can to save Shane from a possession. This is her life now. “Yeah, I do. But...I don’t know what to do. You said that some priests won’t help us because Shane isn’t religious.”

“Yeah, or to come back when Shane is a religious person,” Ryan scrunched up his nose at that. “I don’t think they really grasped how time sensitive this situation is.”

“And we’re not even the same faith anyways,” Sara points out. “You’re Catholic and I’m Jewish. And I’m, like, secularly Jewish anyways. It’s a whole...thing, don’t worry about it,” she adds at Ryan’s confused expression. “The point is, I don’t see how you and I can help him if you’re not a priest and I’m not even Catholic.”

“Well,” Ryan says slowly. “I’ve been doing some reading. There’s some debate as to whether or not the faith of the victim or the exorcist is the one with the most power. Obviously, it’s best if everyone’s in the same wheelhouse, but...theoretically, I _can_ give an exorcism. I mean, Ed Warren did, and he wasn’t an ordained Catholic priest.”

Sara frowned, trying to keep up. “Who?”

Ryan closes out the video program on his computer and opens a file on his desktop. They have only about a half an hour in the booth until someone else needs it, so they have to work fast. Ryan clicks on a pdf file and it opens to an article about an Ed and Lorraine Warren.

“Wait…” Sara wracks her brain for a moment, trying to remember where she’s heard that name. “Isn’t that…”

“Yeah, from the _Conjuring_ movies,” Ryan says quickly, like he’s still waiting for her to dismiss him. “But there’s a lot in those movies based on true events. Including Ed Warren being a self-taught demonologist who did not have Vatican training, but still did exorcisms. Obviously, I’m no Ed Warren, but there’s precedent.” He looks awkwardly at her, as though even he can’t believe he’s saying what he’s saying. “I think...I think I could do it. I think I could do this exorcism. For Shane.”

_For Shane_. It’s so baldly affectionate and loyal, so very Ryan, that Sara wants to cry a little bit. Instead she nods. “What about me?” she says, her voice wavering only a little. “What can I do?”

Ryan looks thoughtful. “I...I mean, I don’t want to be alone while I do all this,” he says, laughing weakly. “And if something...happens to me, I’ll need a second. Like in dueling. Does Judaism have...exorcisms?”

Sara blinks. She’s never had occasion to ask before, for obvious reasons. “I don’t think so,” she says slowly. “At least, not the same way Catholicism does, where it’s, like, everywhere.”

“I think what we both need is to research,” Ryan says, as though he hasn’t been doing that this whole time. “Because I need to know what I need to do, and how to protect myself. And you.”

“I’ll look into that too, I don’t need you worrying about Shane _and_ me,” Sara says stubbornly. “If there’s a way to do a Jewish exorcism, I’ll figure out how to do it. At the very least, I’ll figure out how to protect myself and how to help you.” She feels...not better, but at least more purposeful. This whole time, she’d felt like she’s been drowning in despair and fear. Now, she at least has something she can _do_.

Ryan looks at her with bright eyes, and she somehow _knows_ he feels the same. She gives him a tentative grin, which he returns. Finally, he closes his computer. “C’mon,” he says, “someone’s gonna need this room soon and--”

He and Sara turn to see Shane’s gaunt, pale face staring at them through the window. Ryan spooks loudly, twitching and jumping back, cursing at the top of his lungs. Sara freezes, a rush of fear halting her steps. She is silent as Ryan opens the door to the soundbooth.

“Dude, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he all but yells, in his jovial doing-a-bit voice. “Jesus Christ, Shane, you’re looming out there like some kinda creature when I’m trying to go over evidence.”

“With Sara?” Shane says, and his voice is raspy like dead leaves. He gives Sara and Ryan a dry, humorless smile. “What, am I being replaced?”

Ryan laughs, just a hair too loud to be genuine. She doesn’t know how he’s keeping it together, but she is starting to realize that he’s braver than anyone gives him credit for. “Yeah, if only,” he says, crossing his arms. “Sara still won’t go to locations, remember? So I guess I’m stuck with you, Bigfoot.”

“Guess so,” Shane says. He looks at Sara, and now that she knows there’s something else behind his eyes, she doesn’t know why she didn’t see it before. “So, do I get to see the evidence you were showing Sara? I will need to, before the season starts, you know.”

Ryan scoffs. “Yeah, maybe later,” he says dismissively, and Sara sees something hot flash in Shane’s dull eyes. “The last thing I need right now is to get mowed down by two skeptics within a minute of each other. Give my dignity some time to grow back, will ya?” 

Sara realizes she’s been quiet for too long so she pipes up, “what dignity?” And she laughs a little, and is distantly proud of how normal _she_ sounds as well. They’re all actors here anyways, and she acted for Buzzfeed Violet for a good while. She knows what she’s doing, but she’s never acted for anything such high stakes.

Ryan theatrically rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Anyways, rest assured,” he says to Shane, like everything is fine and Shane’s brown eyes don’t look like doll’s eyes for how much life there is in them, “it’s all, I dunno, orbs and shoes pivoting. I’ll show you later.” There’s a bit of hesitation, as Ryan doesn’t seem to want to leave Sara with Shane, but now can’t stand there without attracting suspicion. So Sara takes matters into her own hands.

“I’m gonna leave you boys to it,” she says with a shaky grin. “I have some non-ghoul work to do.” And, without waiting for either of them to reply, she turns and leaves. She walks down the hallway and does not shiver at the thought of those lifeless eyes watching her. She manages to make it all the way to her computer without looking back, and only when she is sitting at her desk does she breathe a sigh of relief. Her tablemates look at her with some concern, but nobody asks. She has a reputation for being private, sarcastic, closemouthed. Everyone knows not to ask.

Sara spends the rest of the day Googling, and sending emails to various professors, knowing full well that she’ll never hear from them again and if she does, and _if_ it’s helpful, they’ll email her back in 5 months. She’s so intent in her work that she doesn’t really track the passage of time, and suddenly she looks up to stretch and the office is semi-dark and vacant. A chill shoots up her spine, but she forces herself to calm down.

“Just because you _apparently_ believe in demons now,” she mutters to herself as she packs her bag, “doesn’t mean you’re gonna freak out over every little thing. Chill out, it’s just the office.”

She throws her messenger bag over her shoulder and walks away from her desk, wondering if Shane left her here. Obviously if he were himself, he would be at “Ghoul HQ”, as the boys liked to call it, also working late. He would be there probably with Ryan, and they’d be arguing about ghosts or agreeing about popcorn, and she’d sit with them and kvetch about her day. Maybe they’d all go find dinner or see a movie or argue in a Trader Joe’s about something trivial.

But when she gets to their desks, both Ryan and Shane are gone, and the shades are pulled down on the setting sun, so the golden-half light makes the scene even more melancholic than it already is. She lets herself feel the grief she’s been pushing down in her chest, just for a moment. She walks between their desks and puts a hand on each of their chairs and hopes that maybe one day she can have those afternoons back again. 

Something by Shane’s desk draws her eye; a flash of white and red under an untouched coffee mug. She gently moves it aside to see that it’s a bloodstained wad of Kleenex, and when she gingerly picks it up, another tooth falls out in her palm. Her breath catches in her throat as she looks down at another molar and bright red blood.

“Sara.”

She jumps, barely swallowing down a scream. Across the room, almost hazy in the shadow, stands Shane by the elevator. His skin is almost grey, and in the dim light of sunset, it looks like his lower eyelids are drooping away from his eyes. He gives her a wooden grin, and she shivers.

“Hey,” she says, reaching for lightness and barely reaching it. “I was wondering if you’d went home without me. I was...all wrapped up in something.”

Shane shakes his head slowly, mechanically. “Nope,” he drawls. “You have the car keys.”

She reaches into her pocket and grabs her key fob, dropping the tissue paper and the tooth in her pocket as she does so. “Oh,” she says, and laughs a little. “Sorry. I hope you weren’t kept waiting.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Shane asks, and it’s so casual that Sara’s heart jumps in her chest. She dithers for a moment and Shane walks towards her, his steps jerky and uncoordinated, like he is forgetting how to walk. His knee joints pop and crack every other step. He is like a marionette doll. He is like a dead thing reanimated wrong. As he looms over her, Sara smells something like sour milk and rotten meat. She swallows. Shane is watching her carefully. “At my desk,” he says. “You seemed to be looking for something.”

“Oh,” Sara says. “N-no. No, I was just...thinking. It’s been a weird couple days, huh?”

Shane stands in her space for another beat before he steps away from her, walking towards the elevator again. She presses a hand to her pounding heart and follows him, clutching her keys in her fist.

Walking through the garage is the worst, Sara thinks. The shadows are tall and there’s no one around and she’s never felt so intensely unsafe in her life. But Shane doesn’t even acknowledge her. Never breaks his stride to look over his shoulder at her. He folds himself into the passenger’s seat of the car with a groan and she starts up the car.

“Hey babe?” she says, testing the waters. “Hey, I’m really worried about you. I think you should see a doctor.”

Shane huffs out a humorless laugh. “Why do you think,” he says slowly, “that I need to see a doctor?”

Sara’s grip on the steering wheel is tight and her palms are sweating. “You look terrible, Shane,” she says quietly. “You’re pale, you don’t eat, you’re barely sleeping--”

“I sleep fine,” he interrupts, an edge coming back to his voice. “What makes you think I don’t sleep?”

_Just do it, just do it,_ she urges herself, but she is silent. Shane, however, seems to have woken up from his fugue state and is straightening in his seat to look at her.

“Sara,” he says in a mocking singsong. “What are you hiding, Sara? What have you seen, hm?”

She glares at him, because that’s just the kind of idiot she is when she’s afraid. “What are _you_ hiding, you mean?” she snaps back at him. “You come back from shooting all weird and pissy, you’ve been acting either like a jackass or a zombie all week, you literally _told_ me you had a bug that weekend, and now you’re trying to tell me everything’s fine?”

“What did you see?” Shane repeats, his voice getting deeper. “What do you see at night, Sara?”

“I think you should go to the doctor,” she repeats back at him, louder. “I’m afraid that you have a-a tumor or something.”

“ _Sara,”_ Shane says dangerously. “I’m not gonna ask again.”

She chances to look at him, and in a briefest of flash, she can see it. His brown eyes blinked over, and all-black void in their place. If she hadn’t already seen everything else, she would have dismissed it as a trick of the light. She knows better now. 

“You wanna know what I saw?” she says, voice quavering. She reaches into her pocket and shoves the tooth and the bloody Kleenex at him. “That’s yours, isn’t it? Your fucking _tooth_. I don’t know what’s going on with you, Shane, but I’m so scared.” She screws up her face for a moment, breathing deep so she doesn’t cry. “I love you, baby, but I’m so scared. Will you consider going to a doctor?”

Shane is quiet for the rest of the car ride, parking the car, and turning off the ignition. He gets out of the car first, and Sara is frozen in the driver’s seat as he walks around the car and leans down, down until he is peering through the window. Sara knows it’s impossible, but she thinks she sees his eyes shine a little, like Obi’s in the night.

“You’re a liar, Sweetest Sara,” he says softly. “Make sure that won’t come back to haunt you.”

She glares at him, her shoulders shaking in fear. Her heart is pounding wildly against her ribcage like a panicked bird, but she is determined to not let it show. She looks up at him, meets his shining doll’s eyes and says, “I’m going to do more research for a video. I’ll be home late.”

She pulls away and he lets her, watches her depart until he is a stooped shadow, a crooked man. Until he is gone. 

She drives to a Denny’s and thinks about calling Ryan, and then decides against it. She doesn’t need him holding her hand right now. She wants to stand with him, next to him, and she’s got a lot of catching up to do.

She reads, and she researches, and she cries. She drinks more terrible Denny’s coffee than she ever wants to drink ever again. She does not come home until well past 3 a.m.

#

She wakes up before Shane and takes a Lyft to work, texting Ryan to meet her for breakfast on the way. She’s holed up in a cafe with a muffin she doesn’t feel like eating when Ryan arrives, and honestly, he looks like Sara feels. His shirt is rumpled and his hair is standing on end. He’s got two days of stubble going, and he seems to have given up on contacts for a while, opting for his black plastic frames that slide down his nose. There are bags under his eyes. His eyebrows shoot up his forehead when he takes her in, so she knows she doesn’t look much better.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she says without preamble. “And I think we need to spend today and tomorrow separate.”

He blinks. “Why?” he asks, sitting down heavily across from her.

Sara thinks back on Shane’s face that night, his features hidden in shadow, making him seem hollow. “I think Shane is starting to suspect,” she says, barely above a whisper. “I think it would be better if we didn’t talk to each other today and tomorrow. We can meet again on Saturday and...see what’s up and go from there.”

Ryan runs a hand through his hair, standing it up more, and makes a face. “I don’t...really like the idea,” he confesses. “But I see your point. What about your research?”

“So,” Sara says, in her best Presentation Voice. “I was sort of right. Jewish exorcisms aren’t a thing anymore, not really. It’s mostly because Judaism doesn’t have a Hell, per se, and a lot of spirits are just...human souls that don’t know where to go. The best I could find is a text called Michat Yehuda. Or Minhat. There’s some spelling variations, the _point is_ ,” Sara waves her hands, centering herself back on topic, “it was written by a rabbi named Yehuda Fetaya, and is pretty much the biggest writing dealing with exorcism. I can find pieces online, but I don’t have time to find the whole book. However!” She holds up a finger, “I was able to figure out a few things.”

“To do a proper Jewish exorcism, the rabbi must be a master of practical kabbalah, and should be accompanied by ten men--called a miniyan--and I assume they’re...sort of like the backup priests in Catholic exorcisms?” Sara shrugs a little helplessly. “I didn’t really do much research on that because I won’t be able to _get_ ten Jewish men to accompany us on this journey, so it seemed kind of a moot point. Anyways, they form a circle around the possessed person and recite a verse from the Torah--it’s very long--three times. Each time, the rabbi blows a shofar, which is a cool ram’s horn that makes a neat sound.”

“Do you...have one of those?” Ryan asks tentatively. He looks fascinated, drinking up this new information eagerly. Sara shakes her head.

“No,” she says regretfully. “And I don’t even know how to blow one correctly anyways. I tried, like, once when I was a kid. And that’s...kind of important, because the shofar is supposed to basically...shake the demon loose?”

“Like..shake it out of the body?” Ryan asks, leaning forward.

Sara shakes her head, smiling a little. “No,” she says. “Actually, it’s to shake up the demon’s concentration so that the rabbi can _argue_ with it. Which is...really Jewish.” She smiles fondly. “Anyways, the idea is that the rabbi talks with the demon, figures out its name and goals, and then, since apparently a lot of Jewish possessions had more to do with ghosts and human spirits rather than demons, the rabbi and the miniyan pray over the body so that the spirit feels safe enough to leave. I assume in a demon scenario, the body is prayed over so that the demon is driven out. But apparently there’s lots of arguing and bargaining involved.” She shrugs her shoulders. 

Ryan is silent for a moment, eyes bright and fascinated. “That’s...kind of incredible,” he says, looking enthusiastic. “Wow. I love that.”

“Yeah, me too, but we can’t _do_ it,” Sara says, putting her cheek in her hand. “Like I said, I don’t know ten Jewish men we can convince to not call the cops on us. And I don’t know any rabbis, basically.” She tucks a curl behind her ear. “I mean, technically, since _rabbi_ just means _teacher_ , I can call myself a rabbi because I taught you something, particularly about Judaism. Some people would argue that, but we argue about everything.” She taps the side of her chin, thinking. “I mean, I still don’t know anything about practical kabbalah, but I think I can find audio of a shofar on YouTube, honestly.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna be following a Catholic exorcism by the book either,” Ryan nods, encouraging. “I honestly...I really think it’s about the power of faith. I know that you’re not really religious, or anything, but...if you have faith this will work, I think it will.”

“I don’t believe in a lot of things,” Sara says, and she is surprised by how honest she feels right now, at 7:15 in the morning when she’s slept maybe 2 hours. “But I believe in you, and I believe that Shane is somewhere in there. I think...I think I can make that work.”

Ryan looks...touched at her words, and his tired face goes soft around the edges as he smiles at her. “I believe in you too,” he murmurs. “I’ve always believed in the three of us.”

He sounds like he means so much more than he’s saying, but Sara knows this just...isn’t the time. She hopes with all her heart there will be a time to talk about what he’s saying, because she thinks she believes it too. Instead she gives him a sweet smile and says, “see ya on the other side.”

She doesn’t see Ryan Bergara for two days.

#

Sara’s plan was smart--staying away from each other for the rest of the work week. Shane was definitely starting to watch them, ever since the soundbooth incident, and Ryan just kept to the cantina or to empty conference rooms to work. But it was lonely; he missed Sara’s company like an aching tooth, a nagging and insistent little pain. He missed working with Shane, as well. The demon had settled back down and was back to idly piloting Shane’s body like a video game character, all automatic responses and pat sayings. Everyone at work noticed, and more than a few people pulled him aside to ask if he was okay.

“I think he’s getting really sick, but you know Shane,” became Ryan’s rote response, “never stops.”

And because this is Buzzfeed: a company comprised of millennials and other young and frantic overworkers, the excuse is holding for now. But Ryan knows it won’t stick much longer. They have to make a move soon. And he’s sort of waiting for Sara to decide what that looks like, because he’s still half waiting for her to back out, to rescind her vote of confidence in him, and it’s shitty and doesn’t give her enough credit. He knows that. But he’s also afraid of doing this on his own. He needs to know she’s behind him, or he knows he won’t be able to go through with it.

He’s watched more videos and read more accounts of exorcisms than he cares to think about. He’s watched different denominations, he’s even watched horror movies. He wanted to text Sara when he found The Possession because it was a horror movie with a Jewish exorcism, but he resisted. If Shane saw that text, he would be putting Sara in a lot of danger. 

He spends Thursday playing keep-away from Shane, from Sara, from his friends. Throwing himself into schedules and scripts and deadlines like if he finishes the season ahead of time, everything will be fixed. He has all the reviewed footage from St. Anne’s Resort, but he’s kept the footage of Shane. He doesn’t want anyone to see it. He doesn’t think he will ever want anyone to see it.

He takes a half day on Friday, leaves at around 3, and starts buying tools. He picks up more Holy Water, this time an official bottle from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels. He buys a St. Michael’s pendant, because it seems like an obvious choice. Ryan also buys a St. Benedict medal, because the little card that came with it says that he is the patron saint of exorcisms, and Ryan figures two is better than one. He slides the St. Michael’s pendant on a chain and it hangs against his chest next to his grandmother’s rosary. The St. Benedict medal goes in his pocket.

He also buys rope, and that feels weird to him. Like he’s going to get in trouble. Like the guy at Home Depot cutting the length and handing it to him knows that Ryan is going to go to his best friend’s house and tie him up and splash him in the face with water until he goes back to normal. It’s almost laughable.

Friday night, he drifts in and out of sleep, waiting to hear from Sara. He rubs his new pendant absently, staring at the ceiling when his eyes close again. He never sleeps very long these days; he is plagued with the same nightmare: that something is standing behind him in the old cabin at St. Anne’s Resort. He wishes they’d never come there. He wishes Shane had listened to him, ever, at any point during their investigations. He rubs his face with his hand and sighs. He would trade Unsolved in a heartbeat if it meant that this would all be over and Shane and Sara and he could be happy and safe again. It’s a heavy revelation. 

His phone buzzes, and it’s a text from Sara:

_Bring all your stuff. We’re going to have an intervention or an exorcism tomrrow morning i cantt take this._

The typos are worrying, so Ryan responds instantly: _u got it. Is everything ok? r u safe?_

Sara’s reply chills him to the bone: _i think his skin is coming off. i dont think we have much time._

Ryan’s hair stands on end and his fingers shake as he types: _ill be there asap. hang in there, sara._

His nightmares get worse after that.

#

Sara wakes up to the sound of Shane coughing in the bathroom. She glances at the clock, confused by the sun streaming through the blinds, to see that it’s 10:30 Saturday morning. She has a text from Ryan timestamped to ten minutes ago saying he was on his way. Emboldened by this, Sara carefully crawls out of bed, tiptoes across the way and stands in the bathroom door.

Shane is doubled over the sink, blood spilling from his mouth. His back and arms are dark with bruises and when he looks at her, she can see that some blood vessels are broken in his eyes.

“Now will you go and see a doctor?” she demands, hating how shrill she sounds. She crosses her arms over her chest because she wants to reach out to him, to comfort him, but she’s afraid of what will happen if she gets too close. “Shane, seriously--”

“Mind your own business,” Shane snaps. “Can’t you see I’m not feeling well?”

“That’s _why_ I’m telling you this, asshole,” she snaps. “You’re _not_ well, and we’re tired of watching you fall apart.”

Shane’s head rises slowly, and he turns to look at her, blood still staining his teeth. “And who’s we?” he asks, like he’s taunting her.

She glares at him, shaking. “You know who I’m talking about,” she says evenly. “I’ve invited him over. We’re having an intervention. This bullshit has gone on long enough.”

As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door, and for a moment, neither Shane nor Sara move. Slowly, Sara backs away from the bathroom, keeping Shane in her line of sight until the last possible second. When she can no longer walk backwards, she almost sprints for the door, throwing it open and tugging Ryan inside.

“Is he here?” Ryan asks, his dark eyes terrified and determined in equal and conflicting measure. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t she be okay?”

Ryan and Sara turn in tandem to see Shane leaning against the bathroom door, his arms crossed. He looks at them both evenly, and a thrill rises up Sara’s stomach. This was happening. For better or for worse, this was happening.

“Why don’t you tell me your little theory, Ryan?” Shane asks, pushing away from the door frame and walking towards them, jerky and strange. “Do be sure to use the voice.”

“I won’t have to,” Ryan snaps, and he’s moving, suddenly. A flick of his arm and a spray of water arcs out, splashing Sara and--more importantly--Shane.

She hears a sound like meat touching a hot pan, and a howl of pain that doesn’t sound real at all. Shane whips his head back as Ryan’s Holy Water streaks across his face, and when Shane turns back, his face is mottled and burned. There is a moment of pure shock before Shane bares his bloodstained teeth, his eyes blacking out fully.

“Oh Ryan,” the demon purrs. “You really shouldn’t have done that.” 

Sara isn’t prepared for the speed that Shane’s body flies through the air, but Ryan somehow is. No matter what kind of supernatural strength a demon possesses, nothing can really anticipate Ryan’s absolutely foolhardy willingness to wrestle with anything that challenges him. He grabs Shane by the shoulder and tries to body slam him into the carpet. He almost gets there before Shane’s fingers are wrapping around his throat and lifting him in the air.

Pictures are flying off the walls and books are flying off the shelves, surrounding Sara and nearly knocking her out more than once. A mug explodes off the kitchen table, and Sara knows she only has a small window of distraction before the demon kills Ryan. She therefore does the absolute stupidest thing she can possibly do: she runs across the room and takes a flying leap onto Shane’s back. She latches her arms across his neck and pulls down _hard_ , letting gravity cut off Shane’s airflow. The demon chokes and roars, thrashing to get her off of him, but loosens its grip on Ryan just enough for Ryan to wrench away, coughing. 

Ryan squares up, raises a fist, and clocks the demon wearing Shane’s skin clean in the jaw, and it’s a hit that Sara can feel. It sends the demon spinning, knocking Sara off, and flooring the demon entirely. Sara can vaguely hear Ryan yelling “oh shit, oh shit, oh _shit_!” before she comes back to her senses enough to help. 

“I can hold him!” Ryan yells over Shane howling. “You gotta tie him down!”

“Tie him down _where?!”_ Sara screams back, grabbing the rope. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen so fucking fast!”

Ryan hauls the demon up and throws him towards the table. “Kitchen chair, kitchen chair!” he’s yelling, half-hysterical, and Sara feels like she’s absolutely losing her fucking mind as she ties her thrashing, cursing, screaming boyfriend to the kitchen chair they bought together in a set at a yard sale. 

Once secure, the demon screams and howls and thrashes for a moment, testing the weight of the rope and the strength of Sara’s ties before he stills. Sara is panting and Ryan looks glossy-eyed in terror. Shane raises his head to look at them, eyes still inky-black, and when he smiles, his lips crack and bleed.

_“Oh, you kids really shouldn’t have done that,”_ he says in a voice that doesn’t belong to him. _“You have no idea what it is you’ve done.”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello hello it's time for an exorcism. one of...a few i guess. these next few chapters are the fruits of my researching labor, both in speaking to people of the faiths I talk about and also uhh reading a lot of really old texts that were updated onto JSTOR. It was fun! but as another reminder/disclaimer: this deals with the subject of Jewish exorcisms (such as it exists within the faith) and Catholic exorcisms. I grew up Catholic and therefore obviously I am NOT Jewish, and as such am approaching these subjects from an outsider's lens. While I didnt want to completely gloss over, ignore, or de-fang the power of the Jewish faith, it's entirely possible I fucked up at some point! If you notice inaccuracies, and you have the patience/spoons to correct me, please do! 
> 
> Also uh the demon is mean, so prepare for some mean bullshit flung at Our Heroes as they try to free their stupid bf.

Shane’s entire world has narrowed down to pain. Natural light hurts his eyes when he watches his body move without his permission, his mouth hurts as his back teeth fall out, as his lips split and bleed, when his tongue develops sores. His muscles ache, his joints lock and grind together. His head. His head is the worst of it. It feels like there are dull spikes splitting his skull in a ring. His brain throbs as his mind rebels against what is happening to him. He tries, sometimes, when he senses the presence sit back, to get control back. But the crown of spikes around his skull tighten until he thinks he’s going to die and he is forced to give up.

He watches, then, helpless as he scares Sara and threatens Ryan. As he spits out blood and teeth and peels skin off of his hands, revealing pink, raw sores. He pushes and pushes, but the presence doesn’t seem bothered. It brings him forward, to the front of his own eyes, to chip away at his defenses every night. Sometimes, Shane thinks that the presence wants him where he is, so it can feed off of his energy as it gets used to his body. Other times, Shane thinks that he presence is trying to cast him out. 

Shane’s body aches, and his _spirit_ aches, and a few weeks ago he would have dismissed that as some woo shit that Ryan was into. Called it burnout, or being overwhelmed. Too stressed. He’s been all those things before. This is an ache to the core of his being, to whatever holds his mind to his body. He feels his hold on his own body slipping, and it’s like holding onto razor wire, dangling over a ravine. Letting go would be some relief.

_why don’t you let go, then_

The voice that his brain gives the presence sounds a little like Venom, if he’s being honest with himself, which would be funny if Shane wasn’t trapped in a living nightmare. At least, he thinks with his last remaining shred of humor, it doesn’t sound like Bill Cypher.

_let go, let yourself die, and you will know peace._

This is the latest angle from the presence. Dangling relief in front of his proverbial eyes like holding a bowl of dog food in front of a starving animal. Do a few tricks, and then you’ll get this lovely dinner, doesn’t it look nice. 

Except it _does_. There’s no part of Shane that isn’t in aching, unspeakable agony, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can stand it without going completely crazy. He doesn’t know how much longer he can watch the thing in his body act cruelly to Sara and Ryan, the two people he cares most about in the world. He is hurting them, the thing in his body is hurting them, and he is afraid to watch what it will do to them next.

_i will stop hurting them if you give up. i’m only hurting them because i am trying to hurt you. leave, and i will make them forget they knew you. their pain will be over._

If Shane had the ability, he would scream. He doesn’t _want_ to leave, he doesn’t want to die. He certainly doesn’t want to die like this. But...he almost does. The appeal of death has never been so strong, so sweet a relief, than now. His body is filthy now, inside and out, and he is afraid that if he ever got it back, it won’t fit right. Like getting back your favorite sweater to find that someone shrunk it in the wash--now it’s too tight and too close to your skin. He smells like he’s rotting already, and he sort of just wants...to let it go. Let it rot. Ryan and Sara won’t know, they’ll forget, and the presence can do whatever it wants with his stupid, rotting body. He won’t know, he’ll be dead. It won’t matter.

(Sara, tearful and angry and worried, holding a bloody kleenex in her shaking hand. “I love you, baby,” she is saying, and you know she means it with every fiber of her being. She is ferocious in her affection, and her love almost burns your skin with its intensity.)

Searing pain bites across his face. He can’t see, really, but he hears Sara and Ryan yelling, cursing, screaming. His wrists are burning, his chest is tight. He feels like he is being crumpled up like a piece of paper, constricted like a snake’s dinner. Everything hurts so badly.

(“I am _not_ giving up on you, okay?” Ryan is looking at him, and it’s one of the rare times Shane can see clearly, although his body won’t move. Ryan’s eyes are burning bright, and he looks...beautiful in his righteous fear. In his determination. “I’m not giving up. Not in a million years. I promise you that.” Shane feels like he is being split apart by the sheer weight of emotion Ryan is trying to hold back. “We’re a package deal, remember?”

_We’re a package deal_

_I love you, baby_

_I am not giving up on you)_

Shane steels himself, gathering whatever reserves of strength are left in his too-fragile mind, and settles into his skull.

_I’m not leaving,_ he thinks viciously. _And I’m not going to be fooled by your lies. Ryan and Sara will save me. I’m not giving up._

The invisible crown of spikes around his head presses close to his consciousness and he screams, writhing in pain within the confines of his skull. 

_then watch as i destroy them._

#

“Holy shit, holy fuck, holy shit, Jesus _fucking_ Christ--” Ryan is hyperventilating in Sara’s ear, gripping her shoulder as they stare at Shane’s hissing, convulsing body. He’s shaking as bad as she is, his grip on her almost too tight. Sara wonders distantly how she got to be so calm. She figures Ryan is just having the mental breakdown for the both of them.

“Ho-ly _shitballs_ , Sara, fucking Christ,” Ryan is still yelling, turning to look at her fully. His eyes are wide and he is flushed with fear. He lets go of her shoulder to bend down and put his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

Sara swallows hard, forcing herself to speak. “You’re not gonna throw up, are you?” she asks, unable to voice the millions of other questions on her mind. 

“No,” Ryan says, his voice high and hysterical. “No, no, I’m good.”

Their attention is pulled away when the thing living in Shane’s body laughs, wet and rough and grating. He looks up at them both, and Shane’s eyes are black again, the same empty void as before. Shane grins, but it’s a wholly unfamiliar expression, sharp and predatory, and his teeth are stained with blood. 

“ _Little boy,”_ Shane’s mouth moves, but the voice that comes out is entirely different, a throaty, scratchy voice that rings in Sara’s ears and sends sharp pricks of pain up her forehead. _“Do you really think you can contend with me? Little coward man, who jumps at shadows and rides on the coattails of real talent? You make a fool of yourself every moment you speak, and you expect me to be driven out by the likes of you?”_

Ryan flinches, just a little, but to his credit, he remains stony-faced. Sara feels a sharp wave of victory rise up at his composure. The three of them have seen way too many horror movies to fall for basic level jabs. She knows it must hurt, hearing insults coming from your best friend, but Ryan has always known that this thing was not Shane.

But the thing is not finished. Shane’s face morphs into a little sneer and says, _“do you think that if you save him, they’ll both have you? Greedy boy, wanting too much.”_

Ryan does recoil then, backing away as though he’d been slapped. His face is stricken and he is ashen with fear. Sara doesn’t know what the demon means, but Ryan looks _wounded_ more than scared, and it just tips the scale for Sara. All the rage and fear she’d kept under control spills out of her chest. She turns on the demon, squaring her shoulders and raising her jaw in challenge.

“Ryan,” she says, and her voice is surprisingly level and calm, despite the rolling waves of fury crashing against her ribcage, “go and get the rest of your stuff. On the kitchen table is a notebook, and on my phone is a cued up video of the shofar. Get it all for me, please.”

She locks eyes with the demon, forcing herself to stare into the abyss of those blackout eyes. She sees Ryan hesitate in her periphery, but he goes to obey, and she takes a steadying breath. It’s one of those strange moments where you have prepared for something for so long that once the moment arrives, it’s almost surreal. She reaches down her collar and pulls out a Magen David she got years ago for her bat mitzvah. It’s small and silver on a delicate little chain. She never paid it much mind, but always kept it. Now, as she touches the edges with her fingertips, she is glad.

The demon laughs that wet, sucking laugh once more, and the sound grates against her nerves. _“Playing at being a believer, little Sara?”_ he sneers, and it does hurt, seeing such disgust on Shane’s face. It stings, even if it isn’t Shane, and she struggles to keep her focus. She keeps her eyes on his face, not wanting to give away any weakness. _“Lying about God won’t make Him real for you, Sara. And faking belief will only make this worse for him.”_ The demon coughs, hacks, and spits a gob of reddish-black viscera onto the floor. It splatters with a heavy, wet thud onto the hardwood. It grins up at you.

_“His body is dying,”_ it says like she didn’t already know that. _“Human bodies aren’t designed for two inhabitants. And this will kill him, Sara. Because you are not strong enough to expel me, just strong enough to kill him trying. You will kill him, Sara. Are you listening to me?”_ The demon’s voice grows deeper, louder, until the resonance rattles Sara down to her very bones. Things fall off the counters and bookshelves. “ _You Will Kill Him, Sara.”_

“Shut up!” Sara screams, turning on Ryan, “Ryan! Give me my stuff!” She flings a hand towards him, reaching.

Ryan jolts back into action, pressing her phone and the notebook in her hands. “What are you gonna do, Sara?” he asks as the demon roars and curses between them.

“It’s Saturday,” Sara says, queuing up the video. “Shabbat. Today is my day. Sunday is your day. Play the video after I finish reading this passage. I have to read it three times. Okay, Ryan?”

_“You will kill him with your hubris!”_ the demon shrieks. _“And when he is dead, I will no longer be shackled, and I will make you beg for death!”_

“That means he’s not gone,” Sara says, trembling. “Ryan, that means Shane’s still in there. Are you with me?” She is shaking, she feels like she’s going to throw up. Already, her knees are weak with fear and her head is aching. But Shane is still in there, and she is going to save him.

Ryan’s face changes when he hears her words. He squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath, takes the phone out of Sara’s hands and nods. “I’m ready,” he says. “Whatever you need.”

Sara smiles at him, a real and honest moment of relief that lights up her eyes. Ryan smiles nervously back before squaring up behind her. With his solid presence at her back, Sara turns and looks down at her writing, hands shaking.

“The heavens declare the glory of God,” Sara reads, voice trembling at the edges, “the-the dome of the sky speaks the work of his hands. Every day it utters speech, every night it reveals knowledge.”

The demon writhes and hisses, and all along Shane’s hairline, drops of thick red blood start streaming down his face. He looks like a nightmare. Sara can see him straining against the ropes, leaving his wrists bloody and raw, pink strips of skin falling off like ribbons. Ryan is still behind her, and when she spares a glance towards him, she sees he is crying. 

“Without speech, without a word, without their voices being heard, their line goes out through all the earth,” Sara yells over the din of screams and howls, “and their words to the end of the world!”

The demon thrashes in a particular way, and a sickening crunching fills the room. Ryan gasps and it takes all of Sara’s strength not to scream. Each of Shane’s thumbs are bent back as though someone has pulled them. Shane screams, and it sounds too much like _him_ , it sounds too much like Shane, not enough like the demon--

Shane snaps his head back and forth before settling a black eyed grin at Sara. _“Everything you do, I am letting him feel,”_ the demon snarls, blood dripping down his face and pooling into the hollow of his neck. _“So that when he dies, he will feel everything you’ve done to him.”_

Ryan lets out a dry sob, and tears are gathering in Sara’s eyes, starting to stream down her cheeks like the blood on Shane’s face. She fights against sobs, her breath choppy, and continues her recitation:

“In them he places a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber,” she reads, her hands shaking so badly she almost can’t make out the words she wrote down, “with-with delight like an athlete to run his race. It rises at one side of the sky, circles around to the other side, and nothing escapes its heat.”

Her reading is cut off when Ryan gasps like a drowning man and whispers, “oh my _god_.” She looks up, and has to double over so she doesn’t throw up.

Shane’s mouth is open too wide, like a snake’s mouth, and blood and tar is oozing out of him. His black eyes are gone, replaced by milky white, sickly irises. He looks like a corpse that’s been in water for too long. He gurgles, throat bobbing with the effort of breathing and expelling the viscera. Ryan rushes forward, and Sara almost reaches to stop him, but all he does is gently, tenderly tilt Shane’s head forward so he doesn’t choke. Tears are streaming down his face, and he is crying in earnest. Silent cries shake his shoulders as he steps back, his hands still hovering near Shane as though he wants to soothe him. He looks up at Sara, and nods. It’s enough to keep Sara moving.

“The Torah of Adonai is perfect,” Sara reads, and her voice gets stronger as she locks eyes with Ryan, who is watching her with teary-eyed awe. “Restoring the inner person. The instruction of Adonai is sure, making wise the thoughtless.”

Shane is gurgling like he’s drowning, and Ryan wheels around to face him, reaching up and touching Shane’s jaw carefully, trying to clear an obstruction. Sara catches the look on Shane’s face, and leaps forward, reaching for Ryan, too late.

Shane lunges forward and bites down on Ryan’s forearm. Ryan howls in pain, and Sara screams in turn. She sees Shane’s rotten teeth bury into Ryan’s skin, and she reaches for Ryan, grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Keep reading, Sara!” Ryan screams, yanking his trapped arm. “Keep reading!”

She isn’t sure what tells her to place her open palm on the crown of Shane’s head, but she does. His hair is greasy and tangled and matted, and the skin is too warm under her palm, but she presses her hand down anyways.

“The precepts of Adonai are right, rejoicing the heart,” Sara yells, and her arm feels like it’s full of electricity, arcing from her chest into Shane himself. She hopes he can hear her. Ryan is still struggling, yanking his bloody arm around in an attempt to free himself. Sara raises her voice, presses down on Shane’s head, “the mitzvah of Adonai is pure, enlightening the eyes! The fear of Adonai is clean, enduring forever!”

Ryan screams louder, and Sara breaks from her script and screams, “ _let him go!”_ She feels the electricity in her heart spark brighter, and Shane shudders under her hand. Ryan stumbles back finally, clutching his arm at the elbow. The wound looks deep and bleeds freely, half moon arcs embedded into the flesh of his bicep. Sara starts towards him, but Ryan waves her away.

“Finish the reading!” he yells, looking sweaty and pale. Sara is worried he might pass out. But still, she keeps her hand on Shane’s head and bends over him, out of reach, but still close.

“The rulings of Adonai are true,” Sara reads, her voice trembling. Tears streak down her face. Shane screams again with his own voice, and it feels like her heart is going to split in two. “They are righteous altogether, more desirable than gold, than-than much fine gold…”

Shane retches under her hand and another gob of fleshy, bloody viscera hits the floor. Shane gasps, and it’s a wet, wheezing sound, like he’s got water in his lungs. 

“...also sweeter than honey,” Sara forces herself to continue, willing the electricity, the power to come back into her chest. Now, she feels only helplessness and cold, even though Shane is burning under her hand. “...or drippings from the honeycomb. Through them your servant is warned; in obeying them there is great reward.”

A few feet away, Ryan sways and eases to the ground. He is awake, but his eyes are glassy and he looks dazed. “Hold on, Ryan!” Sara gasps. “It’s almost time, you can do it!”

Ryan looks at her and presses his mouth into a determined line. He nods, and Sara turns back to her notes. “May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart,” Sara screams, and the electricity is back, because she’s looking at Ryan and she can _feel_ Shane in her heart, and she’s never believed in anything more than the strength of how much she loves them both. “be acceptable in your presence, Adonai, my Rock and Redeemer!”

“ _Now,_ Ryan!” Sara screams, and Ryan presses the play button with one blood-slick finger.

The shofar sound always sounded almost like a trumpet to Sara, but beyond that she’d never really paid it much mind. Now, though, when Ryan plays the video, and the blaring horn note fills the room, it is the most triumphant and beautiful thing she’s ever heard. 

Shane screams, but it’s a double sound now--between his true voice and the throaty yell of the demon. He jerks his head back and forth, knocking Sara away and sending beads of sweat and blood flying around the room. Shane’s body begins to jerk and seize, but he still screams, a horrible and anguished sound. Sara stumbles back, reaching for Ryan, who is valiantly trying to stay upright. They clutch each other as the audio plays, like children in a storm, as purple and black bruises form around Shane’s neck and arms and cheekbones. Ryan sways in her arms, and she looks at him with wide eyes.

“I think I’m gonna...pass out,” he mumbles, barely audible over the din. Ryan sags in her arms, and Shane wilts in the chair, going limp and finally silent. All at once, Sara is left alone, trembling in the silence, holding Ryan close to her. For a horrible, gut-wrenching moment, she is afraid that Shane is dead, that they went too far with not enough training or expertise and they killed him. But soon enough, she can hear his ragged, wheezing breaths. She breathes and lets herself slump against the leg of the kitchen table, still cradling Ryan, and closes her eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asfhkjsdhfds SORRY YALL i am not dead, but i did get pretty sick for a while there, hence the lateness of this chapter. Thanks for all of yall who stuck it out, I will hopefully bring you back to your regularly scheduled programming <3

When Ryan comes to, the first thing he feels is a throbbing in his arm, like a deep tissue bruise, and his first thought is that he fucked up something at the gym. He is allowed a few fuzzy minutes of blissful ignorance before the rest of his memories catch up with him and his eyes snap open, adrenaline spiking through him like a dizzying, nauseating shot of the worst alcohol. He tries to sit up, but small and gentle hands settle around his shoulders, pressing down.

When his eyes can focus, he sees Sara’s pale, exhausted face swimming into view, and it helps. Some of the panic settles. He can breathe.

“Sara?” he croaked. “What--what happened? What…” He looks down at his arm, where there’s a large bandage pressed across his bicep, the edges reinforced with what looks absurdly like Scotch tape. 

“Shh, settle down,” Sara murmurs, sounding more tired than soothing. “It’s okay, Ryan.”

Ryan looks wildly around the living room, eyes finally settling on Shane, still tied to the chair, slumped over. All the fear jolts back through him, and he once again struggles against Sara’s hands. “What happened? Shane--did it work? Is he..?”

“He’s asleep,” Sara says. “Or knocked out, or whatever.” She runs a hand through her dark curls, stopping to knead at the base of her neck. “It didn’t...not work, I guess. It subdued the demon, but I didn’t want to continue the exorcism until I was sure you were okay and that the demon wasn’t going to…” She sighs, leaning her head back. “I really thought it was going to kill Shane.” 

Ryan shivers, dread filling his gut. “Yeah,” he says shakily. He looks down at his arm again and swallows hard, remembering blunt teeth burying themselves into his flesh, remembering the sheer, instinctual terror of being stuck, being _caught_ and knowing he was going to be devoured. “Ugh,” he says, articulation falling away. “Hope this doesn’t get infected.”

Sara laughs, a breathy and resigned noise. “I know you mean, like, with normal infections, but I can’t help but think about zombie demons,” she says, with a tired grin. Her shoulders are sagging, and she still has her hands on Ryan’s shoulders, but he’s starting to think it’s more to brace her up than keep him down.

“Hah, god, can you imagine?” Ryan groans. “As if we needed literally anything else on our hands right now.” He peers at Sara, taking in the set of her shoulders, the dark circles under her eyes. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Sara sighs, shaking her head and blinking. “I guess doing the work of ten men really takes it out of you.” It takes Ryan a few seconds to remember what she’s talking about--that a typical Jewish exorcism requires more than just two people. Anxiety curls in his chest, mingling with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry I got fuckin’...benched,” he says, glaring at his arm. “I’m okay now, I’ll be there for you more.” He presses his hands against hers, straightening up so he’s sitting forward. 

Sara grins, a slight and almost ghostly shadow of her usual smile. “We still have to do this two more times,” she says, sighing. “And theoretically, that will be enough to at least get the name of whatever’s in Shane.”

Ryan nods. “And hey, if we can’t figure out anything in particular, we can still try tomorrow, with my thing,” he says. “Since tomorrow is Sunday.”

Sara nods, takes a steadying breath, and stands up, reaching down to help Ryan stand as well. Ryan’s muscles scream in protest, and his knees are still shaking, but he tells himself that it’s no more or less pain than a gym workout. He can do this. He will _not_ be a weak link here. He stands next to Sara and they both turn to face Shane, who is still slumped in the chair, the sound of his wheezing breaths the only sign of life. 

Ryan takes a moment to look over Shane, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The skin around Shane’s fingernails are peeling back, and the lower layers of dermis around the fingers are blackening like rot. His wrists are rubbed raw and bleeding where they’ve tied him up, and every open wound smells rancid. Shane’s clothes are stained with sweat and blood and black viscera he keeps coughing up when he’s conscious. Somewhere terrified in the back of Ryan’s mind thinks it might be chunks of lung, like the victims of tuberculosis he studied briefly for a season of Unsolved. Shane’s head lolls back without warning, startling them both, and Shane is so pale he looks yellow. His cheeks are gaunt and the lower half of his face is caked with gore save for the clean rivulets sweat and tears have made down his cheeks. He smells like spoiled meat. 

This is _Shane_ , Ryan thinks numbly, and he is suddenly filled with an almost anguished fury that something could _do this_ to him. To his best friend. To one of the most important people in his life. Ryan is almost shaking out of his skin, and he knows with more clarity than any other truth in his life that he would trade himself for Shane in a heartbeat. 

“ _Then why don’t you?”_ Shane rasps in a demon’s voice, a fresh trickle of blood dribbling out of his mouth. _“Swap places with him, little man, and he will be free.”_

Ryan steps forward, heart leaping at the prospect of freeing Shane, when Sara grabs his collar, spinning him around to face her with more strength than he thought she had.

“Don’t you _dare,_ ” she hisses, eyes full of tears. “We have Shane restrained, we’ve already started with what we need to do. I’m not physically strong enough to tie your ass to a chair, Ryan Bergara. And Shane wouldn’t be able to help me.”

_“But he’d be free,”_ the demon purrs. _“He’d be free. You are strong enough to survive this, Shane is not, and you know it.”_

Ryan’s heart skips, and he feels himself tearing up too. “Sara,” he chokes out. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it. I don’t think his body can handle it, but I know mine can. I _know_ it can.”

“It’s _lying,”_ Sara sobs, her face red and her hands shaking in his shirt. “It’s lying, it won’t let you go and _we_ aren’t strong enough without you.” She sniffles hard. “Don’t lose faith in me, Ryan. Don’t you fucking dare.”

Her words knock something back into place in Ryan’s mind, and although it is the worst feeling in the world, like he is personally killing Shane, condemning him to torture, Ryan nods. “Sorry,” he breathes. “I have faith in you, Sara. I do. We can do this.”

Sara breathes a sigh of audible relief, loosening her grip on his collar. “Thank you,” she says, turning to face Shane with steely eyes. “Let’s get started.”

The demon starts howling immediately, thrashing in the chair that has miraculously not broken yet. Sara reads the Torah passage with a strong voice, as clear as a bell, and with each word, Ryan thinks he can almost see the demon losing control. 

She’s halfway through the passage when the demon starts to shake, and it’s almost like a double exposure photograph. Shane’s body is blurry and shaking, but there’s something else there too, something black and burnt and raw superimposed over him. It screams and shakes in the opposite direction, like film footage in reverse. Sara is yelling over the din, her hands clutching the notebook with white knuckles. 

“Again, Ryan!” She screams, and Ryan jolts back to action, pressing the play button and letting the Shofar’s audio fill the little apartment again. 

Shane screams, and it’s a double voice of the demon’s pain and Shane’s very human anguish. Ryan screws his eyes shut, just for a moment, feeling tears streak down his face. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, he was trying to _save_ Shane, they both were, but they were hurting him so badly. Guilt wracks through Ryan’s chest, sinking into his ribs and squeezing his heart. 

“What is your name?!” Sara screams, her voice also thick with tears and a rage that Ryan could never sustain. “Tell us your name!”

The demon thrashes and roars, and Ryan can see blood trickling out of Shane’s ears, streaming down to stain his collar. Ryan wants more than anything in the world to run to Shane, to wipe away his blood and his tears and take away whatever the fuck is happening. He wants to see Sara smile, and to ease the tension in her shoulders. He wants this all to stop, just stop, and go back to the way they were before.

“Your name!” Sara screams again, and Ryan steps closer, the audio still playing.

“Ryan! Sara! Please!” Shane screams, and Ryan’s blood runs cold because it’s _actually_ Shane. It’s not the demon’s rough and guttural voice, but Shane. Sara gasps loudly, a sharp and pained sound that Ryan can feel in his soul. Shane looks up at them, and his eyes are flickering, brown to black to milky white. “It hurts,” Shane moans, in his very real, very human voice. “God, just...stop…”

Sara falls to her knees in front of him, her hands fluttering in front of his face. “Shane?” she says, her voice raspy from yelling and from crying, “Shane, baby, it’s okay, we’re gonna get this figured out.”

“The...sound hurts,” Shane rasps, ducking his head again. Ryan stumbles forward almost without thinking.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ryan says frantically, scrabbling to turn off the audio, but Sara’s hand flies out and stops him.

“Shane, we’re trying to get the demon out,” Sara says, her voice high and hysterical. “The sound stays on until we get the demon’s name and then we’ll get him out. Hang in there.”

Ryan is crying in earnest now, and he knows Sara is as well. He ducks his head, trying to meet Shane’s eyes, trying to see his _real eyes_ for the first time in two weeks. “Shane,” he says, his voice wet and desperate, “Shane, we’re here. We got you.”

Shane’s head snaps up, and his eyes are black once more. Shane’s body lunges against the rope and both Sara and Ryan have to throw themselves back to keep out of his reach. The demon roars, the Shofar’s audio is still ringing, and it’s so much, Ryan feels like his head is going to explode.

_“Callous girl!”_ the demon roars at Sara. _“I give you an opportunity to save his life and you condemn him! He will die because of you! Selfish, stubborn brat! You have killed him!”_

Sara curls up against Ryan at this, crying audibly. Ryan pushes the volume up at the audio of the Shofar, and the demon roars.

“We have another round of the reading,” he warns the demon, his voice shaking. “Tell us your name and _maybe_ we will let you rest.” And god, god, he can’t believe he’s doing this. He’s threatening a fucking demon. But this demon has destroyed Shane’s body and is threatening Sara and he has to do something, he has to. The medallion burns against his chest, and he is shaking from head to toe, but he yells again, “tell us your name!!”

The demon grins with bloody teeth and spits at Ryan, another chunk of gore splattering to the floor at Ryan’s feet. 

Suddenly, Sara is on her feet, and she is reading again, louder, her hands shaking and her face streaked with tears. Her voice is wrecked, but strong, and her strength bolsters Ryan’s and they stand together in the face of a screaming demon. Glass is exploding in the air as another cabinet flies open and the glasses in the kitchen shatter. Books are spinning in the air, swooping like magpies around their heads, but Sara and Ryan stand, and when Sara is finished, Ryan pushes the volume of Sara’s phone as high as it will go and blasts the Shofar horn one last time.

“In the name of Adonai, Rock and Redeemer!” Sara yells. “In the name of _me_ , you sick bastard, _tell me your name!”_ And she sounds like a warrior, sounds a thousand years old and filled with the power of ages. It sends a chill up Ryan’s spine.

The demon howls and finally gasps, “ _Andras!”_ And then the whirlwind of books and glass falls to the ground, Shane goes limp, and all is quiet. 

There’s a terrible moment where Shane’s body is too limp, too still, and Ryan is terrified that it was all for nothing. But the moment passes, and Ryan can hear the faint wheezing of Shane’s congested breaths once more. 

“Holy _shit_ , Sara!” Ryan gasps, turning to Sara, who looks pale and shellshocked. “Holy fucking shit, dude! You fucking….I can’t believe it! You just...that was incredible!”

“Thanks,” Sara says, smiling wanely. “I think….I’m gonna throw up now.” She stumbles into the kitchen and retches into the sink as Ryan eases down to sit on the floor, tucking his legs under his chin. He presses a hand to his sternum, waiting for his heart to settle down. 

As Sara is washing out her mouth, Ryan happens to look at Sara’s phone that he’s still clutching in his hand. He absently presses the wake button on the side of the phone, and Sara’s lockscreen and clock flashes across the screen. He freezes, eyes widening. He stumbles to his feet and rushes to the kitchen, where Sara is drying off her face. She startles when she sees him barrel in, looking frantically at the stove clock.

“Ryan, what’s--” Sara begins, but Ryan interrupts her.

“Is that clock right?” he demands, shock making his words harsh. He points a shaking finger to the green digital numbers that read “3:35 A”. Ryan watches Sara’s face turn from irritated and confused to shocked and dumbfounded. She rushes to the bedroom and throws open the blinds to see the inky blue darkness of the early morning.

She steps back, rubbing her forehead and looking shaken. “How is that...possible?” she breathes. “You came to our house at, like, eleven in the morning.”

“We...lost time,” Ryan says, feeling faint. “That must be why you feel so tired right now. We’ve been moving at superspeed for the past...sixteen hours?” He sits back down, leaning against the doorframe, rubbing a shaking hand over his eyes. “God, I don’t even...okay.” He takes a deep breath, pushes himself back up. “We need...we gotta drink some water, we need to see if Shane will drink some, and we need to eat.”

Sara squints at Ryan as though he’s speaking gibberish. But Ryan is already back on his feet, his head spinning from the confusion, but also probably from dehydration. He’s not sure where he’s getting this purposeful calm from, probably shock. But he fills up a cup of water and presses it in Sara’s hands.

“Don’t drink it all at once,” he instructs, his dual experience in post-workout dehydration and partying dehydration giving him near-infallible wisdom. “Small sips until it’s done, okay?” He doesn’t wait for Sara’s response before filling another cup and walking with wobbly legs to where Shane is slumped in his chair. 

He approaches warily, his palms sweaty and heart picking up speed again. But all in all, he’s too tired to keep up a constant race of panic. So he kneels by Shane and reaches for his shoulder. “Shane, I swear to god, if you bite me again I’m just gonna punch you in the face,” he mutters softly. “Just gonna clock you in the damn jaw. And make you buy me ice cream when this is all over.” 

But when he pushes Shane’s shoulder back, nothing happens except Shane’s limp body leaning back with the gentle force, neck lolling backwards. Ryan gently wraps an arm around Shane’s head, steadying it upright and gently spilling a little water in his open mouth. Most of it trickles out around the corners of Shane’s mouth, muddying with the blood caked on his chin. But Ryan watches Shane’s throat work to swallow with no small amount of relief. He patiently and gently feeds Shane water until the cup is empty. Shane doesn’t stir, nor does the demon inside him. 

Sara appears at Ryan’s side with a washcloth smelling of hydrogen peroxide and starts gently wiping Shane’s face, his wrists, his forehead and hair. She tucks a strand of brown hair behind Shane’s ear with loving care and Ryan’s chest tightens like it might burst. 

“I know what you’re gonna say,” she says, hoarse and breathy, taking him by surprise. She continues cleaning Shane’s hands and doesn’t look at him. “That if you could, you’d swap places with him. As if that’d be better.” She breaks her concentration to give him a sarcastic look. “As if we’d _prefer_ that.”

Ryan doesn’t know what to say so he sits, mute, in front of two people he loves and does nothing. 

“Nothing about this is good,” Sara says, wiping Shane’s forehead one last time before sitting back on her heels. “But nothing about this would be better if it was you. You know that, right?”

Ryan doesn’t. He really doesn’t, but he also doesn’t think that trying to tell Sara that “friend” demands a little different priorities than “boyfriend”. He doesn’t think Sara would appreciate that, and he doesn’t even know if Sara herself even believes that. It’s fucked up, no matter what. It’s all fucked up. 

( _“do you think that if you save him, they’ll both have you?”_ the demon had sneered with Shane’s face. _“Greedy boy, wanting too much.”)_

It was too much. Ryan blinks back a few stubborn tears, sniffling and staring at the ceiling. Greedy and wanting. He feels full to the brim with something inappropriate and dark, and Sara had seen a glimpse of it. He hopes she knows that he isn’t helping her for any other reason aside from genuine care for her and Shane. Whatever else he feels, he treasures them both. It isn’t...he isn’t taking advantage.

“Ryan,” Sara puts a hand on his arm, squeezing lightly. “Ryan. It’s gonna be okay.”

Ryan takes a deep breath, pushing away his self-recrimination. Later. He can deal with that later. Right now, he has better things to worry about. “Yeah,” he says, swiping at his eyes. “Yeah. You’re right. We have the demon’s name. We can do this.” He stands up too fast and almost falls back to the floor. Sara has to grab him by his shoulders to steady him.

“You’ve got to do an exorcism today,” she says with a wry smile. “Why don’t you take a nap?”

“But…” Ryan protests. “But you’ve just _done_ one! You must be exhausted!”

“I’ll wake you up in a few hours so you can keep watch while I nap,” Sara promises. “But really, we need you to be in good shape now. Okay?”

Ryan is too selfishly exhausted to protest much more than that, and although it feels wrong, he slumps into Shane and Sara’s bedroom and collapses into their bed, surrounded by their scent. It’s calming and grounding, and the soothing familiarity is enough to send him spinning headfirst into sleep


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm early to posting!!! Actually, I'm hoping to post a chapter today and Sunday to make up for being gone for two weeks bc of my illness haha. 
> 
> Anyways! I am pretty fond of this chapter, it has a lot of thematic elements that I've been working on, and the conclusion of some internal conflicts. BUT it also involves a demon saying shitty things to Ryan Bergara: Professional Soft Jock, and making him confront some internalized...biphobia, probably. Anyways, proceed with care and don't listen to the demon, he doesn't know anything anyways <3 
> 
> Thank you for all your kind words and support you guys! we are in the home stretch! 0: what a journey.

_You’re kneeling. You don’t remember why, or when you fell to your knees in the first place, but you are on your knees in the middle of--_

_You stand up, you are standing, you’ve been standing. There’s something in the corner of--_

_Ryan, Ryan, someone calls for you from a distance. Just out of sight. Ryan, please find me, Ryan--_

_It’s standing right behind--_

_\--Ryan, where am I--_

_\--don’t turn around or--_

_Ryan. Be careful._

Ryan opens his eyes, inhaling sharply as he looks around a bedroom that is definitively not his. As his brain catches up to him, he cups his hands in front of his eyes, like he’s trying to hold the dream in his hands like water. And like water in cupped hands, the images leak through his memory. He shakes his head free of the rest of it, and clambers out of Shane and Sara’s bed. It’s strange--this nightmare has been going on for long enough that actual nightmares don’t faze him anymore. He squares his shoulders before he steps into the living room where Shane is still tied to a chair, where Sara is sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up under her chin, and he feels...almost fearless.

“Sara,” he says softly, pulling her attention towards him. She looks up at him, glasses askew and deep circles under her eyes. “How long was I asleep?”

She looks at her watch then back up at him. “Four hours. It’s almost eight in the morning.”

“Church time,” Ryan says grimly, almost not recognizing himself. “Why don’t you go take a nap? I have...a lot of weird shit to set up, and I didn’t write everything I’m supposed to say down like you did.” He gives her a slight smile. She eyes him warily.

“Don’t start without me,” she says, standing up and wincing. Her muscles must be sore, Ryan knows his are. She stiffly walks across the living room, swaying and yawning, stumbling a little as she crosses the room. Ryan reaches for her without a thought, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder, another on her waist. She glares up at him. “I’m serious,” she warns. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I promise,” Ryan says, sincere and touched, bolstered by her protectiveness. “I want you to at least sleep for two hours, though. You look like shit.” He softens his words with a cheeky grin, and she almost laughs, a breathy half-sound in her throat.

“Gee, thanks,” she grins, her eyelids sagging behind her glasses. “Okay, g’night,” she mumbles, rocking up on her toes and kissing him on the cheek, a reflexive gesture. He can tell how automatic it is by the sleepy way she moves, like she’s not putting any thought into her actions at all. The press of her lips burns against his skin and he watches her teeter her way into the bedroom, not saying a word. Soon enough, he is left alone with his thoughts and an unconscious Shane.

Ryan is halfway through cleaning up the mess that Sara’s first exorcism left behind, doing idle research on his phone, when Shane stirs in his chair. Ryan freezes, his heart tripping over itself in his chest. Shane’s chest heaves, and wheezing, whistling breaths become louder as he lolls his head up to leer crookedly at Ryan with demon’s eyes.

_“It’s a timeless dynamic,”_ the demon--Andras--wheezes from Shane’s mouth. _“Three best friends, always one left behind. I must admit, I thought you would keep pining after this one, not try to steer away his lover.”_

Ryan’s hand curls around the washcloth Sara used to clean Shane’s face. He knows, he _knows_ , with all the certainty borne of research and popular culture, that he shouldn’t talk to the demon. That it’s only trying to get a rise out of him. That it will say anything in the whole world to get him to involve himself. So he grits his teeth, throws the washcloth in the sink with more force than necessary, and is silent. He digs out the broom in the space between the refrigerator and the corner wall with the familiarity of one who has spent many nights in this kitchen when the demon spits out a wet laugh.

_“Poor Ryan Bergara,”_ Andras coughs, a marked weakness in the slithering, wet quality of its voice. But when Ryan looks at the demon’s eyes on the face of his friend, they do not look weak at all. _“Always left behind, always the joke, the naive one. You always believed, and look where that got you.”_ Andras laughs again, and it’s a terrible sound. _“Well. It seems to have served you well. You have the belief you were so desperately seeking from your secret loves, and I’m sure you’ll have the girl in your hands soon enough. Not so left behind now, are you?”_

“Fuck you,” Ryan spits, forgetting himself. He is shaking, furious, at the notion that he would _want_ this. That he would trade Shane’s safety and body and mind just to be proven _right_. He would take Shane’s skepticism for the rest of his life if it meant that this never happened. If it meant that Shane and Sara would be safe.

Shane’s face twists into a monstrous version of shock. _“Gotcha,”_ Andras gloats from behind Shane’s face. _“Heaven forbid you not be righteous, after all. That’s why you’ll never get what you want. That’s why they’ll forget about you, once this is all over.”_

Ryan shakes his head, sweeping the broken glass and ceramics into a pile in the kitchen floor. He was glad, suddenly, that Sara wasn’t here. That it hadn’t seemed to talk to Sara at all. It was as though Andras knew that Ryan was the talker, the believer, the one who just can’t stop poking at things. Sara was never like that. Ryan is glad. 

_“Don’t Ignore Me,”_ the demon intones, its growl deepening, sending a feral shiver up Ryan’s spine. He feels, suddenly, like prey. Like he’s being hunted. He looks up at Shane almost without thinking. Shane is sitting across the room, staring at him, but there is a shadow gathering where he is. Despite the inky void of the demon’s eyes, they are still gleaming in the shadow. Ryan’s hands tighten around the broom.

Andras bares Shane’s teeth, and it looks gut-wrenchingly horrifying; an inhuman expression on a human face. _“Face the truth, Little King,”_ Andras says, mockingly. _“I’ve driven this man from you forever. I have fed him your secrets. Your beliefs have put him in danger, your heart has sullied your friendships, and I have tainted this place for him forever. If he lives, he will leave, and he will not look back.”_

Ryan feels like the breath has been knocked out of his lungs. He knows, in the back of his mind, that if (when, when) Shane survives this, things will be different. He already assumes that Shane will not ghost hunt with him anymore. Ryan isn’t even sure _he_ wants to ghost hunt anymore, after this. He didn’t think of how Shane would feel about _him_ after this. How Shane would feel about Los Angeles, or about their friendship. Would Shane blame him? Maybe he would. Panicked tears burn the corners of Ryan’s eyes as he realized that maybe Shane would blame his possession and trauma on Ryan’s recklessness, on his quest for the truth. Ryan should have protected Shane better, as the believer. Shane will recover, and then he will leave.

“Fine,” Ryan says, voice quaking. Tears slip out of his eyes and streak down his cheeks, and he lets them, facing Andras and scowling despite his fear and despair. “I won’t stop him. But I will stop you.” Ryan bares his teeth back at Andras. He holds up his phone, his hands shaking. “I did research on you, buddy. You’re a demon of distrust and discord. You feed on paranoia and anger and conflict. That’s what you did to those guards at St. Anne’s, to make them tie up teenagers and threaten to kill them. That’s what you did to Shane all week, making him say all that shit to me, and to Sara. I’ve got your number _pal_ , and I’m not buying it. How I feel about Sara and Shane means...means that I’ll let them go. If that’s what they want. And there’s nothing you can change about that.”

Ryan stares into the void eyes of evil itself, sprung up from some theological slurry, influenced both by the touch of Catholic Holy Water and the sound of a Jewish Shofar, and he is not afraid. The idea of Shane blaming him for all this is like a slow bleeding out. The thought that Shane and Sara would leave L.A. and leave him behind hurts more than anything else he’s been through yet. But he loves them, and he will not yield.

Andras twists Shane’s face to something ugly and furious. _“How noble,”_ it hisses. _“Your love is disgusting and greedy. It is selfish, and it will only breed discord, Little King. I am looking forward to seeing how disgusted they will be when they find out.”_

Cold mortification shoots through Ryan at the implied threat, but he stays quiet. He has to believe that Shane and Sara wouldn’t find him disgusting, if they were to find out how much he loved them both. They wouldn’t have to return the feelings. But he is sure they would not shun him.

He has to have faith, he tells himself. That’s what this is all about. He turns from Andras and continues sweeping.

Ryan manages to get things suitably cleaned despite being under the watchful eye of a demon. He throws the shards of glass away, puts the books that litter the floor in neat piles. He picks up his duffle bag from where it lay, forgotten by the doorway, and lays its contents out on the kitchen table. His Holy Water, the Holy Oil from the same church, a vial of salt. He pulls out his rosary, the St. Michael pendant hanging alongside, and lets them both rest against his chest. 

Ryan runs a hand over the worn faux leather cover of the Bible he stole from his mother’s bedside table this morning. He was raised by the word of this book, all things considered, and he always used the tools of Catholicism to ward away danger in fearful times without ever really thinking about it. He’s always believed in God--at least _a_ God--by virtue of believing in demons. If there are demons, there must be angels. If there are angels, there must be a God. For dark, there must be light. But he always saw the dark first. 

What does it say about him, he wonders, that he believes in the light only because he already sees the dark.

“Ryan?” Sara’s sleepy voice surprises him, but he doesn’t jump out of his skin anymore. He’s not sure what’s happened to him, and he wonders idly if it’s permanent trauma or just his fight-or-flight instinct finally leveling out. 

Sara is standing before him, rubbing her eyes and blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Her glasses are crooked and her curls are flyaway, but she looks less exhausted. “How come you didn’t wake me up?” she asks, but there’s no heat in her words.

“I didn’t realize it was two hours,” Ryan replies honestly. Time is moving fluidly in this space, ever since they started their mission for Shane’s soul. 

Sara nods, stretches hard--sending her up on her toes as she arches her back. When she settles back to earth, she stares past Ryan to look at Shane. Andras’ eyes stare back at her sullenly. Unlike with Ryan, Andras says nothing to Sara.

“What do you need me to do?” she asks Ryan, not tearing her steely gaze from Andras. 

Ryan sighs. “So, I’ll be reading the rite of exorcism on my phone,” he says. “Basically, whenever I call out a saint’s name, the response is “pray for us”, and then just...splash him with a little bit of Holy Water. I had to make some creative changes since we already know the name of the demon we’re dealing with, which is a good thing.” Ryan grabs the vial of Holy Water and hands it to Sara.

Sara nods, taking the vial from Ryan and holding it with both hands. She rolls her shoulders, lifts her chin, and deepens her cold scowl. “Let’s go to work,” she says.

#

There’s something different in Ryan’s expression, Sara thinks as she stands shoulder-to-shoulder with him against the demon that holds Shane’s body captive. It’s similar to the way he gets when he’s working: a hard sort of focus, unyielding and almost confident. It’s grounding, in a way, and it’s so different from Ryan’s usual frenetic energy, it almost scares her. But she can’t risk asking if he’s all right. Andras is watching them both intently, and she’s seen enough movies to know that a Catholic exorcism is a lot more chatty.

Ryan stands before Shane, who looks up at him with pitch black eyes and an inhuman snarl. He nods at Sara once, who takes her cue to flick an arc of Holy Water in Shane’s direction. Instead of the sizzling heat from the beginning, the water splatters harmlessly across Shane’s bruised skin.

They both freeze a moment, and Ryan curses, plucking the bottle out of Sara’s hands. “It’s about faith,” Ryan says, almost as an apology. “I don’t think...I don’t think you can help me, Sara. This is about me. My faith.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she says stubbornly, because the idea of leaving Ryan alone to Andras’ black-eyed stare goes against everything she believes in. She might not believe in Holy Water, but she has faith in Ryan.

Ryan, who grins at her almost carelessly, and says, “yeah, don’t leave me for sure. But I think I have to do all the work.”

Shane gurgles wetly, and when he opens his mouth, Andras’ fetid breath and horrible voice spills out. _“Let’s see what you have, Little King,”_ Andras hisses. _“What steel do you have in your bones? I don’t think it’s much. Just weak faith and too much fear, little Bergara.”_

Ryan flicks the Holy Water in an almost nonchalant gesture, and Shane whips his head back, the smell of burning skin fills the room. Andras hisses in pain, wincing, as Ryan sets a hard stance and begins.

“Lord have Mercy,” he says with a clear, ringing voice. He speaks fast, almost faster than Sara can keep up with. “Christ have Mercy, hear us now. God, the Father in Heaven; God the Son and the Redeemer of the world; God the Holy Spirit -- have Mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, pray for us.” 

_“Pray, pray, pray,”_ Andras hisses. _“You don’t have the power that our Sara has. Why is that?”_

Sara startles, and Ryan falters in his rapid-fire prayer, just a little. They exchange heartbeat-quick glances, and she can see that Ryan looks just as confused as she feels. As he begins listing saints, some she’s heard of and others unfamiliar, and beseeching them for their prayers, Sara sees Andras leer at her.

_“Exorcisms are about faith. Isn’t that correct, Little King?”_ Andras sneers, black blood spilling from Shane’s mouth. _“But you are the believer. Ryan Bergara: cosmic believer. But Sara got my name, and you can’t even get me to shut up. Where’s your power, believer?”_

“All holy apostles and evangelists, pray for us,” Ryan continues, seemingly unaffected. “All holy disciples of the Lord, pray for us. All holy Innocents--”

_“Oh,”_ Andras says, and the day-old wounds on Shane’s skin are beginning to open up again, blood spilling down his temple, _“could it be that Sara had your belief as well? Sara had your faith as well as hers? You were able to assist her because you believed in it. But she can’t even splash a demon with Holy Water?”_

Sara blinks in surprise as outrage rises in her throat. She knows intellectually that Andras is trying to get her to interrupt the exorcism by goading her, but its words sting old wounds. Her youthful fears that her skepticism made her boring, made her a disappointment, made her a killjoy. And now, the new fear that just because she doesn’t believe in Ryan’s faith, that she might be condemning Shane.

“Why would Sara believe?” It’s Ryan who interrupts his own exorcism. He flings more water across Shane’s face like a backhand, and Shane’s head whips to the side violently. “She’s not Catholic. This is between you and me, pal.”

_“She might not believe in Catholicism, but you aren’t Jewish,”_ Andras retorts, gasping. Shane’s face is branded with livid burns. _“You believed in_ her _, you stupid boy, and she doesn’t believe in you.”_

Ryan is already back to reading, listing vices and sins and fears and asking for his Lord’s deliverance. It’s a rhythm, a chant and a cadence to it, and it’s almost hypnotic. Sara can almost ignore what Andras is saying to her. It stings deep to her soul, though, that her faith in Ryan might not be as strong as Ryan’s faith in her. Ryan is just...such a believer. He believes so hard in ghosts, in people, in hard work, in Sara. He’s a constant of the world, and she can’t match that faith.

She looks to Ryan, as though she should apologize, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to interrupt his prayer. He’s praying the Our Father now, a prayer that even Sara recognizes, but it sounds different now. Ryan’s voice is strong and his words are purposeful, and it’s almost like he is appealing less to a God and more to her and to Shane and to the universe entirely to deliver them from evil.

_“Will she stand by you, Little King, when she knows the truth about you?”_ Andras howls, and Sara can see livid sores forming on the backs of Shane’s hands. Blood is streaming out of Shane’s eyes. _“When she knows what you truly want?”_

Ryan falters, for the first time. And his hands are shaking. The air is suddenly heavy, and Sara feels like she’s watching a television show on low volume but with no subtitles--she feels like she understands every other word of the dialogue, but not enough. She looks at Ryan, but now he’s avoiding her eyes.

“Ryan?” Sara asks, and she hates when her voice sounds small, but she’s afraid now. She’s afraid that Andras has power over Ryan now, and it’s unbearable to think that this monster has a hold on both her boys. Andras leers at her, triumphant, and something possessive and huge rises in her chest.

“Um...I command...command you, Unclean Spirit,” Ryan stammers, trying to rally, but his voice is unsure again, and his shoulders are hunching over again. “Unclean Spirit, name of Andras, along with any of your minions--”

_“Does she know that you want her?”_ Andras interrupts loudly, giving him a toothy smile. Sara’s heart stops. _“Her and her lover, all to yourself. Does she know that you fantasize--”_

Ryan cuts Andras off with a particularly vicious splash of Holy Water, his face screwed up in something furious and something fearful. “Unclean Spirit!” he yells, and the anguish in his voice twists Sara’s heart. “By the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ! By the...by the descent of the Holy Spirit! By...by..”

Andras laughs, a horrible and wet sound, and it is somehow louder than any sound she’s ever heard. It throbs at the back of her skull and feels like her skin is going to split across her forehead. Ryan doubles over, retching, and he drops his phone, and he drops the vial of Holy Water, falling to his knees. Sara scrambles to his side, gripping his shoulder and wrenching him towards her.

“Ryan!” She yells over the din of the demon’s terrible laugh. “I _do_ have faith in you! And I...Ryan, I don’t really have the space to think about how I feel about you right now, but you’re so important to me.” She cups Ryan’s cheek in her hand and presses her forehead to his. “You’re important to both of us,” she says, too loud now, but it’s heavy and needs to fill the air as much as Andras’ mockery. “We need you, Ryan.”

Ryan’s eyes are wide and tearful and disbelieving. He tentatively reaches for her, trembling fingers outlining the sharp line of her cheekbone like he’s trying to memorize it. He stares at her for a moment, and she realizes he’s giving her the space to take it back, to clarify some distance between herself and what she’s just confessed. Her heart swells and she says nothing, giving him a small, fearful smile. 

Something like peace passes over his face, like he’s been freed of a terrible burden, and he squeezes her hands for a moment before standing again, a fierce look on his face.

“By the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ!” Ryan begins again, his voice bright and golden, “By the descent of the Holy Spirit! By the coming of our Lord for judgment, I command you, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions.”

Andras’ laughter turns to roaring, a pained and furious sound. Shane’s body spasms, and Sara hears bones creak and joints pop as his body strains against the chair. Shane’s head thrashes left and right, and Sara can see blood spilling out of his ears. She can tell Ryan can see as well, because he starts speaking louder and faster, a thread of fear and urgency leaking into his voice.

Ryan grabs at the vial of Holy Oil on the table and, uncapping it, lunges forward and smears a shaky cross against Shane’s forehead. Andras screams then, shrill and piercing, and Sara finds herself fallen to her knees in pain. Shane is spasming like he’s having a seizure.

“Ryan!” she screams. “Ryan, I don’t know how long Shane can take this!” Ryan nods to her, scrolling down.

“I cast you out, unclean spirit!” Ryan screams. “Along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every spectre from hell, and all your fell companions.” Ryan flicks more Holy Water, and Andras screeches. “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Begone and stay far from this creature of God!”

Andras shudders in Shane’s body, meeting Sara’s eye and spitting out another chunk of viscera. 

“For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell. It is He who commands you, He who once stilled the sea and the wind and the storm.” Ryan takes off his rosary and presses the cross at the end to Shane’s forehead. Again, the smell of burning flesh fills Sara’s senses, and she fights against nausea. Ryan’s voice is hoarse and cracking. “Hearken and tremble in fear, Satan, you enemy of the faith, you foe of the human race.”

Andras is still staring at Sara, and dread sends chills up her spine. Ryan seems to also notice, because he moves to block her from its line of sight. Still, though, she can feel its gaze on her.

“Fear Him, who in Isaac was offered in sacrifice, in Joseph sold into bondage, slain as the paschal lamb, crucified as man, yet triumphed over the powers of hell.” Ryan spills Holy Oil over his jeans in his haste to wet his thumb again, and he traces a cross over the livid wound on Shane’s forehead. “Begone, then, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!”

Andras leers at them both. _“If I must begone, then so too will he!”_ It roars, and Shane’s head is turning, turning under Ryan’s thumb, twisting too far, and both Sara and Ryan can hear Shane’s vertebra popping and cracking. It’s then that Sara realizes.

“It’s going to break his neck,” she gasps. “Ryan! Stop! It’s going to break Shane’s neck!!”

Ryan lunges forward, dropping all his tools and grabbing Shane’s head, cradling it against his chest. Ryan’s muscles bulge and twitch as he works against the strength of a demon, holding Shane’s life in his arms. Sara rushes forward, weaving her arms with Ryan’s, holding Shane’s head until there’s no resistance. And then, they hear coughing. But it’s not the wheezing, deep chest coughs of Andras.

They both lean back and Shane is looking back at them. The blood vessels in his eyes are shot, and blood still trickles out of his eyes, but they are brown and alive and _Shane_. Sara’s heart soars, and she gasps out a sob as she cups his face with both hands. Ryan sags against Shane, his forehead against Shane’s collarbone, but he is silent.

“Shane, Shane, oh my god,” she sobs, relief speeding through her like liberation. Like falling in love again. “It’s you, oh my god--”

“I don’t…” Shane rasps, his voice ruined and fatigued. “There’s not much time. He’s not gone. He’s...he was surprised. You two...surprised him.” He gives Sara a weak, lopsided grin that is so familiar she knows right now she never wants to see anything else for the rest of her life. It’s too brief, though, because a spasm of fear and pain wracks through his face, his brown eyes flickering to black and back to brown.

“I love you,” Shane coughs, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I...both of you. I love both of you.” Ryan looks up at him like Shane is deliverance itself, and Shane’s grin is almost self-deprecating. “Not exactly how I saw...this confession thing going…but…”

Whatever Shane was going to say was cut short as his body is wracked with spasms and thrashes. A double-exposure of demonic energy twitches through him, and he sags forward, unconscious.

It’s too much. Seeing Shane for the first time in all this time is too much. Sara sits down hard on the ground and starts to cry stiff and furious sobs. Ryan sits next to her and doesn’t hesitate this time to gather her into his arms. He’s crying too, like always, but it’s comforting. A painful sort of solidarity. A sign she’s not alone in how she feels.

“Do you believe us now?” she asks Ryan, leaning against his chest. “We aren’t going to just _leave_ you, Ryan.”

Ryan cries a little louder, and it breaks her heart to know that he was holding onto that fear all this time, would have held onto that fear forever if he felt that was what would be best for her and Shane. It’s infuriating and unnecessary, but she knows it’s him to the core.

“We have to do something different,” she says, still holding him. “We have to do this together. Tomorrow, we have to drive him out together.”

Ryan sniffles, pulls back to look at her. “Like...a mixed exorcism?” he asks, his voice cracking and hoarse.

Sara shrugs. “Sort of,” she says. “Andras had a point. That...that my belief and my faith isn’t based explicitly in religion. We don’t _do_ exorcisms as a rule. I don’t even really know what Andras _is_ , aside from something that’s taken over Shane. But I do believe in you,” Sara looks up at Ryan and watches his face open up at the confession. “I believe that _we_ , together, can do this. My faith is in you, and it’s in Shane. And...and I don’t want to leave you out to dry again.”

“I mean,” Ryan says, sniffling and wiping at his eyes. “I did get bit in the first quarter, so I think we’re even.”

Sara smiles, tears welling up all over again. “Yeah, that’s true,” she banters back. “You _are_ still at risk for turning into a demon zombie.”

Ryan laughs, and it’s a very pale version of his usual, full-bodied laugh but it still warms Sara’s heart. “Yeah, true,” he says, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “True.”

They stay like that for a long time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit yall this is the second to last chapter, counting the epilogue. It's a little shorter, and I hope you'll forgive me for that haha. I also hope you'll forgive me for my terrible Californian Spanish, I have that thing in common with Ryan Bergara and it comes out in this chapter. I am not fluent, and it shows. Anyways yeah, the last chapter (wow!) comes out on Sunday.
> 
> Thank you all a thousand times.

Sara calls out for her and Shane, citing a family emergency. Ryan drags himself awake to call one of his bosses a little after that, but he barely gets through the first sentence before he is told that he sounds terrible, and to not come back in until he stops sounding like the undead. He is lucky, he thinks, as he hangs up and flops on his back on the living room floor, that he works for the office he does. That his work speaks for itself enough that he can do this. Lying sits uncomfortably in his gut, but he’s not about to tell the truth.

He and Sara had spent the night on the living room floor, curled around each other at Shane’s feet. It was only when Ryan himself jerked awake after a nightmare that they realized that Andras hadn’t acted up at 3 a.m. They took this to mean that it was weak after two days’ worth of exorcism, that Shane was right and that they had surprised it. 

Ryan’s body aches like he’s run a marathon, and his skin is dry and dehydrated. He feels like the three of them have been trapped here for years. He’s afraid to open the blinds, partly for fear that someone will see them and call the cops, but partly because if he looks outside to see the world turning as normal, his brain will melt out of his ears. So he stretches, cracks his back, and sits up stiffly in the middle of the living room, watches Sara limp to the kitchen and pull out a box of cereal. She comes back and sits across from him, shoving dry cereal into her mouth mechanically. She offers him the open box and he forces himself to eat a few, small handfuls. His mouth is already so dry, but he can feel his body eating itself.

“The thing about an exorcism,” Ryan says, licking his chapped lips, “is that you are used as a conduit for a higher power. Like, you’re supposed to call upon God, or your ancestors, or whoever to help you fight this fight. What do _we_ do? Who do we call for?”

Sara stretches, rubbing her tired eyes. “I mean, I didn’t, in the end,” she reminds him. “I just...called on myself, I guess. Because Shane’s _my_ boyfriend. This is _my_ family. Why do I need anyone else to help me who isn’t with me right now?”

She looks at him, and Ryan knows she means every word, just like that. She believes in her own love, and Ryan’s love, and that’s enough for her. Ryan just...didn’t know if he was strong enough to carry the power of her belief like that. He was sure to let her down.

“Ryan,” she says, sounding gently exasperated, “how come you believe in ghosts more than you believe in yourself? Like, you literally made me say that. I had to say that Disney Channel shit and you don’t even appreciate it.”

Ryan laughs. “I dunno,” he says, grinning up at her. “I think right now there’s a lot more evidence in ghosts than my ability to get rid of them.”

“Well,” she shakes her head. “That’s stupid. Besides, didn’t you tell me some guy already did that? Exorcise someone without being a priest?”

“Yeah, but he still called on God,” Ryan pointed out. “The Christian one, anyways.”

Sara waves her hand. “Who cares?” she says impatiently, like Ryan is being intentionally obtuse. “He did it to save someone. It’s the right thing to do, no matter what. Isn’t that enough?”

_(Aren’t I enough?)_

Ryan hears what she’s actually asking, as loudly in the little corners of his mind as though she spoke it outright. It’s just not that simple; believing in ghosts and demons always came with the assumption that they were stronger than him. He just couldn’t believe there was a strength inside him that could withstand the wrath of a demon.

Near them, Shane begins to growl, startling them both to their feet. Eyes still closed, Shane’s head jerks from left to right, and he starts shaking violently in his seat. As his body shudders and seizes, another body--whispy and black--undulates in and out of his shoulders. It’s the double-exposure effect again, Ryan realizes, except Shane’s body is shaking so fast, it doesn’t look real. The energy sucks itself back into Shane, and then is shaken back out, blinking like lights about to go out. 

“Well,” Sara says, her voice shaking, but her shoulders squared, “you’re gonna have to find something to be enough, Ryan. Because I think this is the last shot we’re gonna get.”

Ryan stumbles behind her, grabs his Holy Water, and nods. He watches Shane’s body shudder, trying to shake off the other body settling in around it, and realizes that Shane is trying to help them. That Andras is weak enough that if they could only just push a little more, they could free Shane altogether. It’s the three of them now, Ryan realizes, and they’re depending on him as much as he’s depending on them.

He grasps the rosary at his chest and flicks his Holy Water at Shane’s face. The rosary is heavy and hot in his palm, and he remembers when his grandmother gave it to him, at his Confirmation. It’s family as much as faith, Ryan realizes. And his family has always been his faith.

“Mis...mis ancestros,” Ryan says, struggling to let his Spanish-by-proxy lessons seep through his panic soaked brain, “ayúdame por favor con lo que debo hacer…” he just knows he is fucking up some conjugations, probably using the wrong words somewhere, but the idea that his family is here, standing behind him although they never met him or spoke to him, fills him with something close to courage. So he plants his feet, raises his hand and yells, in his barely-proper Baja Californian Spanish “por favor quédate a mi lado y dame fuerza!”

He brings the Holy Water down like a whip, spraying the water in an arc at the demon. The water cuts through the air, and the shadow-exposure pushing and pulling against Shane recoils, hissing like it’s been burned. Black ichor sprays out of Shane’s mouth, splattering all over Sara’s shirt and Ryan’s face. It’s almost scalding hot, but it doesn’t smell like blood or bile. 

Sara steps forward, and with a touch of her phone screen, the sound of the shofar sounds throughout the room, a now-familiar call. “This is the sound of my ancestors, and me. This is my family and you will not hold him any longer!” Sara yells, her voice clear as a bell. The shadow over Shane spins and thrashes, and the kitchen chair rattles and creaks against the onslaught. “Get out of him! Get out of Shane, in the name of _his_ freedom!”

Ryan slashes out with the Holy Water again and the demon howls as Sara continues: “get out of him, in the name of me! And _my_ freedom!” Shane’s body gurgles and coughs, but he sounds clearer, somehow, and Ryan forces his terror down into his chest. 

Sara’s small hand clamps down on Ryan’s shoulder, and she stands next to him, every inch of her small frame burning with righteousness. Ryan will never know what it is to have that fire. He doesn’t burn like that. He isn’t full of fire and spines and protectiveness like Sara is. He isn’t laconic and sharp and attentive like Shane. He believes too hard and spooks easily and doesn’t like conflict.

But he loves Shane, and he loves Sara, and if that’s all he’s got, well, that’s got to be enough. He braces himself, looks at Shane’s shifting eyes and lifts his chin and raises the Holy Water high above his head.

“Shane,” he says, his voice soft and barely audible. “I think I love you, man.”

His hand descends.

There’s noise and light and shadows, and wind kicks up books and shoes and rattles windows and furniture. Ryan and Sara grab each other and sink to their knees, ducking from the flying debris of the living room. Ryan presses Sara close to him, squeezing his eyes shut as the lights flash on and off, as a roaring noise throbs at his temples, in his eardrums. It sounds like screaming and rushing water and an avalanche all rolled into one awful, unbearable sound.

And then, silence.

Everything falls to the ground and the wind stops as abruptly as it started, leaving Ryan and Sara huddled together in the still aftermath, shaking and panting. Ryan looks up over Sara’s shoulder to see Shane leaning back in the chair, blinking. He has a dazed, painful look on his face, but his eyes are brown, brown, brown, and Ryan doesn’t think he’s loved the sight of anything more in his whole life. 

Sara catches on, turns to see Shane, and she scrambles over to him, Ryan on her heels. Shane looks at them both from under dirty brown bangs and lets out a hoarse cough.

“Owch,” Shane rasps, and his voice sounds so genuine, Ryan actually falls back on his heels, sitting down in an undignified pile and laughing, high and hysterical. Sara shakes her head, but is also grinning, tears streaking down her cheeks, as she gently unties Shane from the chair. Ryan’s chest aches and his sides burn, and he isn’t sure if he’s laughing or crying now, but he reaches for them both anyways.

Despite his hysteria, Ryan helps ease Shane to the floor, coaxing his cramped muscles into a more comfortable position. The three of them lay on the floor, limbs tangled up in one another, and laugh, and cry. It’s almost like being a child again, Ryan thinks dimly, as he finally stops having a fucking meltdown long enough to breathe. There’s something uncomplicated in this moment of exhausted relief. The first time they’ve been without fear for days.

Shane breaks the silence first. “You _would_ laugh at me,” he says, and he sounds wrecked, but there’s somehow, somehow laughing sarcasm on his tone. “I pull an Annaliese Michel and...you’re just that doctor that showed up to watch me eat spiders.”

Ryan dissolves into laughter again, high and breathless and rough, as tears well up once more. “Fuh--shut the fuck up you---” Ryan gasps. On the other side of Shane, Sara starts laughing too.

“I can’t believe Ryan was right,” Sara murmurs, sounding hoarse herself. “Ugh, you’re gonna be insufferable forever, aren’t you?”

“I literally _cannot_ believe this is happening right now,” Ryan gasps, curling into Shane’s side. He smells awful, like sweat and blood and dirt. But he no longer smells like he’s rotting from the inside out, and another hit of sweet relief washes over Ryan like the best kind of perfume. He tentatively, gently, puts a hand on Shane’s chest, right on top of his sternum, and lets himself feel the rise and fall of his chest. After a second, another, smaller hand settles on top of Ryan’s, rubs the back of Ryan’s knuckles with her thumb. 

Shane shifts, and it almost startles Ryan enough to pull away, but before he can move, Shane puts both his big hands over Sara’s and Ryan’s and squeezes gently. “Thank you,” Shane says, and he sounds so close to tears that Ryan isn’t sure his heart can take it. But hell if he’s going to leave now. 

“It’s like I said,” Ryan says, pressing his forehead against Shane’s shoulder. “We’re a package deal.”

If they cry at that, all three of them on the floor of a wrecked living room that smells like blood and sweat and fear, there’s no one listening anymore. They are all three of them freed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow you guys. i honestly can't believe i did it lmao but this thing is finally finished babeeyyy. thank you all so much for your kind words and your encouragement and your energy. I've never experienced a fandom as Soft as you guys and I'm glad :>
> 
> this isn't the end of BFU stuff for me! I'm a slow as shit writer, but I will see y'all again <3
> 
> anyways content for this chapter: nonsexual bathing, pretty much intense aftercare, less fraught confessions. everyone is Gay and finally happy about it <3

Sara’s back is starting to hurt, so she knows that Shane’s entire body must be in agony. She sits up and slides her hand out from between Ryan’s and Shane’s, but both of them reach for her, barely awake. She shushes them gently, and all she wants to do is lay back down and sleep for years, she also wants this all to be over. She wants all evidence of this nightmare to be out of her apartment and her life. 

So she gently scoops her hand under Shane’s neck and helps him sit up. Halfway up, Ryan rouses enough to loop an arm behind Shane’s shoulders. Together, they help him sit up, and Shane’s bloody, filthy face contorts in pain.

“Jesus,” he hisses, “my...every muscle. Is this what working out is like, Ryan? Do you hurt like this every time? This is...unbearable.” He’s joking, and his tone is light enough that if Sara didn’t know him very well, she would think he was doing all right for himself.

But she does know him, and very well. She can see the shadowed look in his eye and the pained set of his mouth, and when she accidentally brushes the raw skin of his wrist, he shies away, just so. Shane jokes because he has to, and one look at Ryan’s face shows that he isn’t fooled either.

Ryan ducks his head slightly like he wants to lean in and kiss Shane on the cheek, or put his head on his shoulder, but Shane is a mess of quivering muscles and old blood, so he does neither. Instead, Ryan shakes his head. “Nah, buddy,” he replies softly. “This...this is a little different than lifting some weights at Planet Fitness.”

“Not like pumping some iron?” Shane shoots back, grinning and adopting a “bro” voice. Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, man. Let’s get you to your feet.” Ryan’s hand goes under Shane’s arm, and Sara stands on either side of Shane’s legs, holding out her hands for him to lift himself up. She can see anticipatory fear on Shane’s face, like he knows it’s going to hurt, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be ready for it.

“We got you,” Sara assures him. “Shane, it’s all right, we got you. On the count of three, okay?” Ryan braces himself to move behind Shane, and Sara feels another wave of gratitude for Ryan and his muscles. She’s glad he’s here for more reasons than there are grains of sand on the beach, of course, but practicality speaking, she wouldn’t be able to all but lift Shane to his feet from behind, steadying him when he sways like an uprooted tree.

Shane’s face is pale and he’s sweating again, sending blood rivulets running down his face again. It makes Sara’s gut clench, and she breathes a few times to bring her back to the moment. It’s fine. He’s okay now. Shane steadies himself, leaning against Ryan, but he looks a little like he’s going to throw up.

“Guys, I…” he swallows and tries again with a wry grin, “not to be, uh, alarmist here, but I am...fucking disgusting and in an obscene amount of pain. Just...all over.”

Ryan nods at Shane’s elbow. “I know,” he says, soothing. “We’re gonna get you to the bathroom. Your muscles are cramped, you need some hot water. Also, you reek. Just throwing that out there. You fucking stink.”

“Beg pardon,” Shane says, dry as a bone, but some color is returning to his face. The banter is helping, Sara realizes. This is what Ryan is good at; Sara is prepared to go to battle for anyone she loves, and she doesn’t hide it. But she’s not good with...nurturing. She doesn’t inherently know the right thing to say or do to alleviate pain. With Ryan, it comes as easy as breathing. And for Shane’s sake, it comes doubly easy. She wonders how any the three of them ever operated without the other. She wonders if they _did_.

She and Ryan gently maneuver Shane to the bathroom, his knees clicking and quaking. There’s a hairy moment where Shane’s legs give out entirely while they round a corner, but Ryan keeps him upright, and Sara keeps him moving, and together, they manage to ease Shane down to a sitting position on the lid of the toilet.

Sara starts the water, running it til it’s hot enough to turn her palm pink, and turns back to her exhausted boyfriend, who is sagging forward into Ryan’s forearm. Matter-of-factly, she reaches for the hem of his shirt, gingerly pulling it over his head. It’s hard, because lifting his arms causes Shane visible pain, but she manages to get the stinking t-shirt off and flung into the corner. She plans on burning these clothes anyways, so she sees no need to be careful with them.

The steam from the shower spray billows out from around the curtain, and fills the whole room with soft edges and fog. She feels like she’s dreaming, almost, as she takes a moment to card a hand through Shane’s grimy hair. It catches on grime and dried blood, but she doesn’t care. He makes a small, fragile noise and leans against her, tucking his head under her chin with a sigh. Her heart clenches and she presses a kiss to his bloody forehead, tasting iron. Without thinking, she glances up at Ryan, who is watching them both with bright eyes and such a guileless expression of affection that she almost can’t look him in the eye. When their eyes do meet, Ryan breaks her stare immediately, as though he is still ashamed.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, and she isn’t sure who exactly she’s talking to. Maybe both of them. Maybe all three. She kisses Shane’s forehead again before gently peeling Shane’s pants and underwear down his waist and letting them pool about his knees. “Kick those off for me,” she instructs Shane, who nods blearily as he obeys. Sara stretches and pulls her shirt off over her head without thinking. She doesn’t think of it at all until Ryan makes a small, strangled noise, almost too quiet to be heard over the spray.

When she looks up, Ryan is leaning away, thumbing a lock of hair out of Shane’s temple in a gesture that’s too much like a goodbye for Sara to deal with right now. “Ryan,” she says, sounding too loud in this small place. “I can’t hold him up by myself. It’s...it’s okay, Ryan.”

Shane blinks at both of them, his eyes going in and out of focus, but staying his warm brown. “Sorry, bud,” he murmurs, and that eliminates the hesitation in Ryan’s face.

“Don’t apologize,” he says, returning back to hold Shane’s shoulder. Despite his words, Ryan looks everywhere but at Sara as she pulls down her jeans and kicks them away. It would be comical, in any other situation. It’s almost comical now. 

Shane huffs out a laugh anyways. “S’just not how I saw this going,” he slurs, leaning against Ryan’s chest. Ryan has to laugh at that, and so does Sara.

“You think about this a lot?” Ryan asks, leaning Shane towards Sara so he can pull off his own shirt. Sara can’t help but stare.

Shane shrugs against her. “I dunno,” he murmurs. “I think...underneath other thoughts. I wouldn’t exactly have ever turned you outta bed, y’know? And...I thought Sara would think that was weird, but she didn’t.”

Sara feels a little bit like she’s put on the spot, and she supposes this would freak her out more if everything else hadn’t happened first. As it is, she just feels a flutter of bashful embarrassment and says, “it takes a lot more than this to weird me out. Besides, it’s...the sentiment is shared.” 

“Oh,” Ryan says, his skin--already ruddy from the heat--reddening even more. A tiny, awed smile finds his way across his face, and all at once, Sara wants to kiss it. 

But they have a task, and they need to finish it. Sara helps guide Shane under the water and Ryan follows, still in black boxer-briefs. Shane sighs deeply when the spray hits him, and the worst of the grime sluices off of him in the water pressure, leaving bruised, pale skin behind. He sways, and Sara guides him forward, against her shoulder, and she runs her hands down his shoulders, his back. Ryan steadies him, as he always does, and his eyes are dark and bright when they meet Sara’s.

“Will you wash his hair?” Sara murmurs. “I’ve sort of...got my hands full.”

“Ha ha,” Shane mumbles from her shoulder, which makes both her and Ryan laugh. Ryan nods and blindly grabs at one of the shampoo bottles. He grabs Sara’s, but she doesn’t care as she watches him lather up his hands and gently work his fingers into Shane’s hair. Shane groans into Sara’s shoulder again, and a grin quirks at the corner of Ryan’s mouth. 

“Ryan, this is very forward,” Shane mumbles, his words muffled by the fact he still has his face buried into Sara’s neck, “but you have magic fingers. Holy shit.”

Ryan does laugh then, almost the full laugh Sara is used to. “Thanks, big guy,” he says, having run out of witty repartee. The suds from Ryan’s ministrations run black, then red, then clear the longer they all stand in the hot water. It’s soft-edged and dreamy and almost, almost enough to help her forget the nightmare they all just lived through.

“I genuinely, no hyperbole, want to stay in this hot water forever,” Shane says finally. “But my legs are going to fall off.”

Ryan laughs, and Sara grins as well, pressing a kiss to Shane’s cheek. He hasn’t shaved in a while, so his stubble pricks and tickles her cheek. “C’mon then,” she says. “Careful, the floor’s wet.”

They stumble and stagger their way to bed, gently depositing Shane onto the soft comforter and wrapping him in a blanket before she looks at Ryan, who seems to be suddenly confronted with the fatal flaw of wearing his only pair of underpants to the shower. He looks over at Sara, his hair dripping and hanging in his dark eyes, and she wants to swallow him whole. 

Instead, she says, “listen. If you aren’t...if this isn’t how it needs to happen for you, that’s okay. Do what you have to do, just as long as you come back. But this is me--us--telling you that what you’re feeling is reciprocated.”

Shane looks up at him, exhaustion already settling on his face, but he manages a smile for Ryan and says, “I did tell you I loved you, didn’t I? I can’t remember what, like, actually happened versus what was just some weird hallucination, but I pretty vividly remember that--”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, a bashful smile dawning on his face. “You did. I was...I was there.”

“Oh good,” Shane says, closing his eyes. “Well, desperation may have made that come out a little more sloppy than I wanted, the sentiment is still true. Now that we’re, y’know, ostensibly out of danger.”

Ryan looks at Sara, and for the first time, she’s more aware that all three of them are naked and soaking wet. That Ryan has seen Sara cry more than any person in her life up until that point. That Sara has seen Ryan at his bravest, for the first time in their...whatever kind of relationship this is, this could be. They’re vulnerable, and literally stripped bare, and Sara realizes that Ryan is asking for permission, for validation.

So she steps forward and rocks up on her toes, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. It’s barely a touch, just a brush of skin on skin, but the potential makes it electrifying. Ryan’s breath stutters over her lips and she smiles against his mouth. 

When she steps away, Ryan looks dazed and a little in shock. Sara gives him a small smile before clambering into bed, officially too tired for any more guessing. She curls up on one side of Shane, tucking her head against his side. She opens one eye to see Ryan still standing where he is, a deep _wanting_ plain on his face, warring with nervousness. She gives him a sleepy smile, but it’s Shane who huffs out a laugh and extends an arm.

“C’mon, Ryan,” he murmurs. “What do you want, a gilded invitation?”

Ryan grins at that, bright and dazzling and full of relief. “Shut up, Shane,” he says, and his eyes are shining with tears as he sheds his wet underwear and stumbles into bed on the other side of Shane, sighing loudly. “Holy fuck, you guys,” he murmurs. 

“Y’know, I have to take a knee with regards to demons,” Shane says, his voice fading in and out of sleep, “I think this deepens my belief that ghosts aren’t real.”

There’s a pause. Sara shakes her head.

Ryan lifts his head and just _stares_ at Shane. “What the _fuck?”_ he demands, his voice pitched high in disbelief. “Are you...are you fucking kidding me Shane--”

“No, no, hear me out,” Shane says, grinning at the ceiling. “So there’s demons--some kind of malicious spirits that are driven away by human will, sure, how on earth would just regular human spirits even _survive_ in a realm where those things are just...running amok? Doesn’t add up. I’m gonna say a big, fat nope to ghosts.”

Ryan looks beside himself. “I...you...I can’t fucking _believe_ \--”

“If you two don’t shut up and go to sleep, I’m breaking up with both of you,” Sara calls out, grinning despite herself. “I really will. Don’t test me right now.”

Shane laughs, giving her a lazy salute. Ryan laughs softly and burrows under the covers, laying on his stomach. Sara lifts her head and watches Ryan’s face relax into sleep, really lets herself look. Because she can now, she’s allowed, and it’s not creepy to think that he’s beautiful. She glances over at Shane and notices that he’s staring too.

“While I would _not_ have this experience again,” Shane murmurs, running a gentle finger through Ryan’s black hair, “I’m glad this part happened.”

Sara huffs out a laugh. “Yeah,” she kisses Shane then, deep and loving. When they part, she presses a her forehead to his and just inhales. “God. Let’s never do this again.” It’s a joke, and she can’t quite think of anything deeper to say. The boys are rubbing off on her. 

Shane laughs, a huff of air against her skin. He sobers up then, just looking at her face so intently she feels like he’s trying to commit it to memory. “I, uh, definitely thought I wasn’t gonna make it out,” he says quietly. “You believed in me. You didn’t give up.”

“Well,” Sara says, leaning back and blinking tears away. “I didn’t give up, but I certainly didn’t believe in this for real until I was, like, halfway through my exorcism.”

Shane laughs, and it’s loud enough to cause Ryan to stir slightly. They watch him shift in his sleep until he settles. “Well, thanks anyways,” Shane says, teasing lightly. “For believing Ryan. And for...doing weird bullshit just to try and save me.”

“Shane,” Sara says, and it feels heavy, like she’s promising more than what she’s saying, “I will always, _always_ do whatever weird bullshit I can to keep you safe. And even more weird bullshit if I need to save you.”

Shane looks at her, awe touching his sharp, exhausted features and he has to turn away, blinking. She wonders if they had more energy if they’d be crying right now. Neither of them were very crying people, but this ordeal has changed a lot with everything. 

“I love you,” Shane says, and it’s the same loving heaviness that Sara feels in her chest right now. “And I love that you managed to convince Bergara that it’s all right to be attracted to men _and_ that we wanted to date him, all in a week! You’ve been busy.”

Sara rolls her eyes, smiling. “I didn’t do that,” she says with a sigh. “He’s gonna have to come around on his own, but I think we got a head start. I love him too.” And it’s true. Sara loves Ryan so much it feels like there’s a vice around her heart. Shane smiles at her, fond and soft and sleepy. 

“Whatever happened to ‘go to bed or I’m breaking up with you’?” Ryan mumbles from Shane’s other side, and both Shane and Sara startle, bursting into laughter.

“Why, Ryan, I’m surprised at you,” Shane says, fondness warming his tone. “Here we are, saying nice things about you--”

“No, no, Ryan’s right,” Sara intervenes before they can start arguing again. “Sleep. Now. Go.”

#

Ryan knows the story doesn’t end here. Shane wakes up screaming and crying a few hours later, and it takes both of them to calm him down, to bring him back to earth. Sara almost passes out from dehydration, and Ryan finds himself the most presentable person to go and get pizza and bring it back to the apartment, because none of them want anyone to even get a glimpse of their living room. 

When he steps outside, it’s dusk, and Los Angeles is bustling and it gives Ryan an immediate headache. He feels like he’s missed a step going down the stairs. Disoriented, he gets halfway to the pizza place before anxiety hits him so hard he almost turns around and comes back. By the time he returns, he feels like he’s going to cry if he doesn’t see Sara and Shane immediately, to make sure they’re safe, to make sure nothing is hurting them anymore.

Ryan knows that even their triumph is heavy with cost. When they go back to work, Shane startles every time someone claps him on the shoulder. And Sara snaps at three separate people for innocuous comments. Ryan has to sit in the single stall bathroom and breathe and focus really hard on not having a mental breakdown. 

They can’t go to therapy. They can’t talk to their friends. They can’t tell anyone what happened to them. A few days pass and the three of them end up sitting together in their now-clean living room in silence. 

But _that_ can’t be the end either. Ryan is determined that this not be the only legacy of what happened. He is determined to have the scars be scars and not open wounds forever. So he gets braver. He kisses Shane like a challenge one night when they’re staying late editing something trivial. He kisses Sara another night like he’s answering a question she asked weeks before. 

(Aren’t I enough?

Always.)

Together, they grow, and Ryan isn’t afraid anymore.


End file.
